Sonipat’s Golden Harvest: How the Haryana City Became India’s Medal Factory

Sonipat’s Golden Harvest: How the Haryana City Became India’s Medal Factory When Kushal Dalal picked up the boxing gloves, his family didn’t say no. When he gave up and opted for archery—because Kushal didn’t like the idea of ​​hitting anyone and felt at home in the “quiet sport”—they agreed to it, too. There was no place nearby to practice archery, so part of the family’s 5-acre land in Siwanka village in Sonipat was cleared. Paddy straw was woven to give him targets.Village gossip abruptly ended Kiran Pahal’s running days. After word of Kiran “talking to a boy” reached her father, he stopped her from going out. He relented after Kiran went on hunger strike. Her grandmother bought her a pair of running shoes with her pension money.Before Neha Goyal played hockey for India, she helped her mother and sisters repair bicycles. Neha was eight when a friend told her that hockey players got free shoes, clothes and notebooks. Her mother, who worked in houses and in a foam factory, did not stop her from playing.At the recently concluded Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, neighbor Delhi reaped perhaps India’s biggest harvest for a single city. Each of these stories – and 10 others like them – culminated in a gold medal. Each started and flourished in Sonipat.Although in NCR Sonipat doesn’t have the influence of Delhi, Gurgaon’s money or Noida’s infrastructure. As a manufacturing hub for automotive components and accessories that are used both domestically and abroad, Sonipat has so far literally written its script piecemeal.A sport bubbling in its DNA works much the same way – many individual parts that fail to show their fitness as a sum. Aichi-Nagoya was the rare case where they did. Serendipity? Maybe. Organization? possible Talent? Sure.But talent needs spotting. And for virtually all gold medalists, it was someone in the family who made it possible, sometimes with a push, other times with a silent sacrifice – the family cleared the land, the grandmother spent her pension, the mother worked to buy shoes, the coach paid the school fees for a stranger’s daughter.Another aspect of Japan’s feat that sets Sonipat apart from traditional sports schools like Bhiwani (boxing) is the variety of 13 (individual and team combined) gold medals won by athletes from here in various disciplines such as hockey, archery, kabaddi, athletics and wrestling.

Tenderness

Serendipity played a role. For several of these medalists, sport was not the original dream. Neha Goyal, a midfielder for the gold women’s hockey team, started taking hockey classes after her friend said her hockey players got free shoes, clothes and notebooks. She joined because her family needed the items. Some families saw sport as a way to support a child’s education; others saw it as a path eventually to a government job.Coaches told TOI that access to proper training remains the difference between talent lost and talent realized. The sportsmen of Sonipat have certainly benefited from the concentration of sports institutions and training centers around Rai and Bahalgarh. It has Sports Authority of India (SAI) National Center of Excellence, Residential Sports College and Haryana Sports University. The SAI center covers 83 acres and its heritage-listed facilities include a 70-metre archery range, an artificial lighted athletics track, artificial hockey pitches, two kabaddi pitches, wrestling halls, a sports injury and rehabilitation centre, a hypoxic chamber and hostels.Established by the Haryana government in 1973, the Motilal Nehru School of Sports in Rai has athletics, archery, weightlifting, wrestling and swimming among its purviews.Village akharas, kabaddi nurseries and private academies are located in different parts of the approach road. One such academy, run by former Indian hockey captain Pritam Rani Siwach and her husband, has produced a steady stream of national hockey players. Seven hockey players from Sonipat were part of the men’s and women’s Indian teams that won gold in Aichi-Nagoya: four women and three men. All four women and one in the men’s team (Pritam Rani’s son Yashdeep) trained at the academy, which now has around 200 players, including 150 girls.Ritika is among the youngest. The five-year-old is still mastering numbers and the alphabet at school, but quickly picked up dribbling and immediately agreed to show this reporter how to hold a hockey stick. “Aise pakadte hain. Aur phir ball co goal mein daalna hota hai. Jo ball andar daalega, woh jeetega! (this is how you hold the stick. The goal is to score a goal with the ball. Whoever does that wins)” she said.When Pritam Rani started the academy in 2004, she had seven trainees. As the academy paid tuition and helped buy shoes and other equipment, more began to join. I never wanted money to be the reason for a talented girl to stop acting,” she told TOI. Food also mattered. Many of the girls came from families where milk and fruit were luxuries, so the academy started providing soaked chana, milk and bananas.

Pritam Rani

Neha, who came to get her shoes, stayed with her dream – to build a house for her mother. “I didn’t start playing hockey thinking I wanted to play for India. I was in Class IV when my friend told me about shoes, clothes and notebooks,” she said. “There were people who told my mother to leave me at home. But she never stopped me.” The monetary reward for the role of player of the match changed her attitude towards hockey. “The Rs 2,000 changed something in me. I started thinking if I play well, I can earn. Then hockey was not just a game for me. It became my responsibility,” she said.The first reason Abhishek Nain played hockey was less ambitious. He was nine when he followed a classmate to the ground because it was an excuse to sleep. his father who was with BSFasked him to consider quitting hockey – which he played at the national level – after a series of injuries and focus on getting a government job. The coaches convinced the family to let him continue. A few years later in Aichi-Nagoya, he scored India’s winning goal against Pakistan in the Asiad semi-final.Seeing girls running on the track outside her school got Kiran into athletics so much that she started sprinting in school shoes and slippers, sometimes even barefoot. “I didn’t know where it would take me or that one day I would wear the India badge. I just loved running and wanted to try.” She joined Indian Railways in 2021 and got financial stability after years of training. “It gives a lot of confidence for an athlete to know that there is a certain job,” said Kiran, who won gold in the 4x400m relay in Japan.

Kiran Pahal

Meenu Beniwal, president of the Haryana Olympic Association, linked Sonipat’s sports culture to shrinking land and the search for livelihood outside agriculture. “As ancestral land has shrunk and agriculture has become less viable for many families, sport has emerged as an important avenue to secure government jobs and build a better future,” she said. Proximity to Delhi and recruitment opportunities in the army, railways, paramilitary forces and other central government departments also encouraged youngsters to take up sports, she felt.Sports University of Haryana Vice-Chancellor Ashok Kumar said ambitious parents helped build the ecosystem by investing their own money and taking risks for their children. Institutions joined this support and created the basic framework of the sports infrastructure in the city. The university admits 1000 and above students every year and Sonipat represents approx 20% reception desk.Kabaddi player Pardeep Narwal says children in villages like Rindhana grow up watching neighbors, relatives and elders succeed in the sport. Local grounds and kabaddi academies run by ex-players are bringing in a large number of youngsters to the sport. In Rindhana alone, around 300 children practice in three plots, he said.

The story of Sonipat

“There were 25-30 athletes playing in the Pro Kabaddi League from my village alone,” said Narwal. Seeing the success of other athletes will encourage more children in the village to try. “Family members motivate children. They watch their neighbor’s son succeed and ask their own children why they can’t do the same,” he said.Wrestler Naveen Mor describes the same process at akharas, where local dangals give children competitive experience early on. “When the entire community supports a sport, the chances of producing champions naturally increase,” said Mor, who runs a wrestling academy on a one-acre plot near Murthal where he trains 70-80 kids. He said he does not charge them because talent can emerge from families who cannot afford expensive coaching.“Many of our athletes come from humble farming families, where children grow up helping with manual labor and learning discipline, perseverance and the value of hard work early in life. Wrestling has also offered generations of young people from middle-class families a way to build careers, gain recognition and secure government jobs. Previously, opportunities for many such families were limited and sport became a path to a better future, a culture that was created over time as a coach. families and former wrestlers who are contributing to the next generation,” Mor said.The same can now happen for hockey and athletics. Maybe it takes a village to produce gold medalists.

Sonipat’s winners

Sonipat gold medal winners (13)Women’s hockeyNeha GoyalJyotiSakshi RanaShilpi DabasMen’s hockeySumitAbhishek NainYashdeep SiwachAthleticsKiran PahalArcheryBroker KushalKabaddiSunil KumarAsh MalikRajraniWrestleSujeet Kalkal