At the point when Siva Subramani, the nation's best vaulter by a distance, lost his previous mentor Wear Wilcox to Coronavirus in May last year, he thought his profession in games was everything except over. The aggravation of losing Wilcox, a resigned traditions official whom Siva calls his spine, was difficult to process for the 26-year-old. He lost his concentration as well as his will to seek after the game.
"He was my spine. How will you
respond assuming you lose yours?" asks Siva. Yet, the Tamil Nadu
competitor realized he needed to get himself and vault. He was unable to let
his late mentor down.Thus, it was just adept that subsequent to reworking his
own public record by clearing the bar at 5.31m and bringing back home the gold
at the continuous Public Games, Siva committed his award to his previous
mentor. He gripped the decoration in his grasp as his eyes went clammy while
expressing, "It's for him. I truly miss him."
“After he
passed away, I just wanted to quit the sport. I was distraught. He was my
mentor, coach and backbone. He is the reason why I am a sportsperson today. I
owe him everything,” says Siva after his victory on Monday when the rest of the
field couldn’t even breach the 5m mark.
Siva’s
first interaction with Wilcox almost seems like destiny. Coach Don was heading
to the Poondi Madha (Mother Mary) shrine in Thanjavur in his car when
he glanced at Siva in Kallanai, which is en route to the church.
“I was just
taking a stroll with my friends and he saw me. He stopped and asked me if I was
a pole vaulter. I recognised him instantly since my brother was a vaulter and I
knew about coach Wilcox. He had probably seen my videos on social media,”
recalls Siva who was 17 back then.
In a way,
Wilcox adopted the teenager. He got Siva enrolled at the prestigious Loyola
College and even paid his first-year college fees. In the second year, Siva
broke the junior national record at the junior fedration Cup,
earning a scholarship at the college.
From water to land
Before beginning his tryst with pole vaulting, Siva was a promising swimmer. With no swimming pools in his village, the youngster honed his skills at the Kallanai dam in Trichy district of Tamil Nadu. One day, Tamilarasan, his elder brother, took Siva to a college meet he was taking part in. “It was like magic. The way he (Tamilarasan) leapt over that bar was mesmerising. At that very moment, I decided that I want to take up vaulting,” Siva recalls.
But there is no doubt who would have been the proudest to see Siva’s latest medal. “If Don sir was there, I would have been on a different level. There are a lot of things I miss, but the most would be his scolding. Training le nalla thithuvaru (During training, he used to give me an earful). It helped me a lot to improndve. I miss that so much,” says Shiva holding his tears back.