Just after 5pm on Sunday, the phone rang inside Odisha’s Secretary of Sports Sachin Jadhav’s office on the third floor of the Kalinga Hockey Stadium. He had been waiting for that call. Jadhav listened, before answering excitedly: “Congratulations. He has done it. Yes, I’ll be there.”

The caller was passing on the news that Pratik Maharana, one of Odisha’s top sprinting talents, had just won the National U20 Junior Championships 200m title at the Kalinga Stadium – the venue of the track and field competition. It is barely 500m from where Sachin Jadhav sat. For the state and its coaches, it was a sort of vindication. Maharana had been a promising talent since he began competing on the U14 circuit. The 200m national junior title catapulted him from being a mere promise to someone ready to take a giant step up – to the senior stage.

Inside the Kalinga Stadium, the venue of the National Junior Athletics Championships, Maharana’s win added a touch of hysteria to the proceedings. Maharana’s interviews continued. There was a sense of relief that Odisha had delivered – not just a gold medal, but also proof that the promise shown by Maharana had borne fruit, even though everyone knows the road ahead has only become more arduous.

Behind the schoolboy smile, the innocence and the toned-down delight at winning, the mental battles will now begin. Winning brings a different kind of pressure – continuity, podium finishes, medals – and it is certain he will and should continue in that vein, given Odisha’s investment in sport. Beyond that, Maharana has been handed the baton to carry forward the state’s illustrious legacy of producing top-class sprinters.

Anuradha Biswal, whose 100m hurdles record stood for 20 years until Yarraji broke it; Rachita Mistry, who held both the 100m and 200m national records; Srabani Nanda, still competing and part of the bronze medal-winning 4x100m relay team at the 2010 Commonwealth Games; Dutee Chand, current national record holder in the 100m (11.17s) with two silver medals at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta (100m and 200m) and later banned in 2023 for four years after failing twin out-of-competition dope tests; Amiya Mallick, once the national record holder at 10.26s and still running the anchor leg for Odisha’s formidable 4x100m team — these are just some of the top names who have competed at the Olympic Games, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and Asian Athletics Championships. Not to forget Lalu Prasad Bhoi, a major force in national sprints, and the present 100m and 200m national record holder, Animesh Kujur, who trains in Bhubaneswar and competes for Odisha. There is enough history for Maharana not only to draw inspiration from but also to emulate and surpass the state’s icons.

ACCIDENTAL ENTRY INTO ATHLETICS

Inside the media lounge, Maharana fidgets. He has never given a string of interviews. Running back-to-back races is easier; he would rather be back on the track. His entry into athletics was pure accident.

How many kids playing cricket get picked out, asked if they want to run, and even say, “Yes, let’s try it”? Within two days, Maharana was jogging under the watchful eye of Siba Mishra, former coach of Dutee Chand. It would be more than a year before he was asked to sprint. Patience, as Maharana puts it, was key. Then, during a U14 state meet in 2019, he was told to sprint. His acceleration caught the eye, and Siba Mishra knew he had a star in the making. During the pandemic, Maharana jogged on the roads when allowed and, during the rest of the time, delivered packages — a period he doesn’t like to talk about.

His progress to the 200m final, after the disappointment of a silver in the 100m, is impressive. In the prelims, he clocked 21.68, and 21.56 in the semis. “I had to be at my best for the final,” he says. “I made a mistake in the 100m and didn’t want to repeat that.”

The start was good, powerful. On the bend, he was still in the group that included Punjab’s Jasjit Singh Dhillon and Maharashtra’s Arnav Takalkar. One also needed to watch Karnataka’s D. Prateek, who had produced a brilliant final leg in the 4x100m relay, bursting from behind to clinch the gold from an almost impossible position. But Maharana was settling into his stride. Into the straight, he broke away, inching forward until, like a spearhead, he shot into the lead. “I realised then that the race was mine,” he says. His powerful legs carried him across the finish line, shattering Veeresh Mathur’s 2023 meet record and breaching the World Junior U20 Championships qualifying mark of 21.25. In a single final, Maharana had taken a big step towards realising his latent potential — talent that, if nurtured, could take him to even greater heights.

His improvement over the past three seasons is testament to that. Of course, there is a massive gap between the junior and senior levels – a whole different universe. Maharana is versatile; his running style still needs fine-tuning, and the process of unlocking new approaches to sprinting continues. At the moment, his hallmark is reliability – his ability to follow the process and build on his explosiveness. Amiya Mallick, former national record holder, said of Maharana’s win: “Good application, and with experience he will run 20.85/95. But he shouldn’t be in a hurry. He has age on his side.”

Analysing the run, Amiya added that the start could have been better, but “he recovered, and his second half was very good, which shows he has an excellent presence of mind in how he judged the race.”

It has been a long season for Maharana; this was his 10th competition of the year. “I was feeling tired even before the race,” he says, “but top races will always be like this – you have to motivate yourself from within and get that timing to qualify.”

LOYALTY VS OPPORTUNITY

Animesh Kujur, training at the High-Performance Centre in Bhubaneswar, is an inspiration, as is Dutee Chand’s presence during training sessions in Rourkela. Before the Tokyo Olympics, Maharana trained with Dutee, and it was then that she told Siba Mishra, “He has the speed plus the power to finish off races.”

On training with Dutee, Maharana says: “She comes to Rourkela occasionally and trains with us. She guides us on how to warm up, what to do after training, how to rest, how to condition our bodies, and how to prepare for competitions. She shares all this from her vast experience. She also advises us on running at international competitions. Thanks to her guidance, our diet has become more consistent.”

Perhaps Maharana is Dutee’s redemption — her way of cleansing that doping stain by shaping another champion. There are similarities in their finishes, in the mid-section of the sprint. But there is still a long way to go before Maharana can dream of an Asian Games final, let alone a podium finish like his mentor achieved at the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games.

Big academies will want to sign him, and that is already a dilemma for Maharana — should he continue training in Rourkela with Siba Mishra or move elsewhere to train and compete with better athletes? It seems an easy choice, yet not so for someone whose loyalty lies with the man who discovered him.

Professional sport is unrelenting in the choices it demands. Unfortunately, most opportunities are time-bound; a slight delay, a year slips past, and in a sprinter’s short career, that can feel like a lifetime. Winning is fun, but it comes with risk and sacrifice. Athletes are not machines. He’s just nineteen. It’s difficult not to look at Maharana and think in terms of probabilities and possibilities. Hopefully, he ticks the right boxes and makes the right decisions.

– Ends