From bamboo pole & sandy mat to nat’lgold, UP vaulter scales new heights

Lucknow: When pole vaulting caught the fancy of a 15-year-old boy during a school-level athletic meet in a village in Ghazipur district way back in 2015, the firm resolve to make a mark for himself was his only guiding force.
As the availability of fibre poles and vault pit was a far cry, Shekhar Kumar Pandey, a poor farmer’s son, used bamboo sticks as poles and started practising on the banks of the Ganga where the sand served as vault pit and mat for him.
To the surprise of many, Shekhar (now 21) bagged the gold medal in district-level championship after a week’s practice without any guidance.
“When I first saw pole vaulting, I found it very easy as I was used to jumping over small rivulets using bamboo sticks. I won a medal at district-level without any proper training which boosted my confidence,” said Shekhar, who recently bagged a gold medal in the National Inter-State Athletics Championship in Patiala (Punjab) in June-end.
“Though I lived in Mirzapur, I studied at Haridwar Rai College in Chandauli. My teachers supported me in my pursuit and my physical training instructor, Anand Singh, guided me well,” said Shekhar, who is currently pursuing BA (second year).
On the insistence of a friend, Shekhar moved to Varanasi and joined Dr Sampoornanand Stadium.
“It was in Varanasi that I got to know about the technical aspects of the sport and started practice. My senior, Rakshit Kumar, gave me his fibre pole for practice. This was the first time when I saw a fibre pole,” he recalled.
At the stadium, his coach, Rajendra Singh, trained him only for 15 days but changed his life by introducing him to national coach Prabhash Chandra Tyagi, who helped Shekhar make a mark in the national arena.
“Shekhar is extremely talented and he would have done much better had the coronavirus pandemic not affected his training. He comes from a poor family and did not have resources. I asked PC Tyagi to arrange for his stay and food at CISF camp,” said Singh.
Speaking about Shekhar’s brilliant performance in the national event, his coach PC Tyagi said: “He is very talented. The way Shekhar performed despite the hindrance in training and practice due to the coronavirus pandemic is commendable. If he gets proper training and facilities, he will do well in international events too.”
Asked about the impact of pandemic on his practice, Shekhar said though Covid restrictions came as a setback, his experience of training with bamboo sticks on the river banks again came in handy when all stadiums and sports activities came to a halt.
“Though it is no match to proper training, I again took up bamboo sticks for practice during the first wave of the pandemic. Coach Rustam Khan in Prayagraj, now posted in Jaunpur, later arranged facilities for practice during lockdown,” he said.
Shekhar’s achievements include silver medals in School National Games (2016-17), Youth National Championship (2018), Gujarat, and Junior National Championship (2018) in Ranchi.
He also won a bronze medal in Under-20 Junior National Championship in Guntur (2019) and a silver medal in Khelo India in January 2020 in Guwahati.