It all began seven years ago when Piyush Raj, a resident of Banjari village in Rohtas district, Bihar, started training on his own, running across the Kaimur hills and along the banks of the Son river, inspired by locals preparing for army recruitment.On Saturday, that grind paid off, even if he fell just short of the top spot. The Bihar runner finished second behind Kerala’s Mohammed Ashfaq, who won the 400m in 46.05s at the U20 Federation Cup in Tumkur, Karnataka.Raj clocked a personal best of 46.62s to not only finish second but also qualify for both the U20 Asian Athletics Championships and the U20 World Championships. It was the first time he went below 47 seconds, and a strong final 100m saw him surge past Ranjith Kumar S of Tamil Nadu, who finished third.“Someone had told me that running on mountains builds good stamina, so I began running on Kaimur hills which is part of the Vindhya Range,” Raj recalled during an exclusive interaction with TOI.“Even during Covid I used to wake up at 3 in the morning and run for 2-3 hours. I also used to run on the banks of the Son river, which is very close to my village, to increase endurance and strength.”Later he started going to Inderpuri, about 30kms from his village, to train at a small stadium after Pankaj, a friend of his, inspired him.“Pankaj later moved to Patna to train at Patliputra Sports Complex and asked me to join him, but I hesitated. After my father passed away in a road accident in 2015, my brother and I ran a wheat mill to support the family,” said Raj, who dreams of following in the footsteps of Milkha Singh one day.However, his mother, Babita Shrivastava, took up sewing to keep the family running and encouraged him to move to Patna. Once there in 2022 he struggled at first, but he got a job at the mess in the sports complex and continued to train parallel.His perseverance was first awarded when he won gold in Hexathlon at East Zone U20 Championships in Patna in the U16 category the same year.From next year onwards, he began competing in decathlon and impressed at National Inter-District Junior Athletics Meet (NIDJAM) following which he was selected for the Bihar govt program and was sent to Hyderabad to train at Gachibowli Stadium.Since then, he hasn’t looked back.Trained by Laxman Korra and Dronacharya awardee N Ramesh, Raj shifted to 400m from decathlon and kept winning medals at various events. But finishing second in Tumkur is certainly his biggest achievement so far.“He is very disciplined and listens to everything we say. In these three years, he hasn’t even gone home for more than 10 days,” said Korra, a resident of Hyderabad.As for Raveendran Sankaran, director general cum CEO of Bihar State Sports Authority (BSSA), who played a major role in supporting him from the very beginning, believes this is just the beginning.“His patience, perseverance, and ability to endure pain during training have brought him this far. In 2022, he was running barefoot, but his talent was identified by AFI during NIDJAM and since then, there has been no looking back,” said Sankaran.Raj, meanwhile, couldn’t help but feel proud of his achievement.“In the semifinal, both Ashfaq and Ranjith had run below 47 seconds, which put me under pressure ahead of the final. I knew I had to finish at least second to secure an individual spot for the U20 Worlds,” the Bihar boy said.“In the final, I had only one goal — to represent India. While running, I could see it in front of me, so I gave everything in the last stretch and set a personal best.”Not only the individual event, but he is now likely to be selected for the 4x400m men’s as well as the mixed relay teams are set to compete at the U20 Asian Athletics in Hong Kong for which a camp will begin in Bengaluru early next month.
