NEW DELHI: Being confined to a wheelchair has clearly not been a deterrent for Deepa Malik, one of the country’s most decorated athletes. A cursory glance at her achievements underscores that truism: the 45-year-old is an accomplished swimmer, adventure sports junkie, biker and entrepreneur and has had her name entered into the Limca Book of Record not once, but four times.
Suffering a spinal tumor in 1999, which required three surgeries and 183 stitches between her shoulder blades and left her paralyzed from the waist down, did not stop Deepa from chasing and achieving her dreams.
A recipient of the Arjuna Award in 2012 for her achievements as a swimmer, she has swum across the Yamuna River against the current, covered a distance of over 3,000kms from Chennai to Delhi on a customized motorbike and scaled nine high altitude motorable passes in
Ladakh
in nine days. In fact, Deepa was the first paraplegic athlete to attempt to cover such difficult terrain.
Paralympian Deepa Malik receiving Arjuna Award from President Pranab Mukherjee. (TOI File Photo)
She also has to her credit 54 gold medals at the national level and 13 at the international level across sports, including swimming and in the javelin throw and shot put. Apart from this, she even represented the Rajasthan women’s cricket team.
Born in Bhaiswal in Haryana, Deepa was a self-obsessed adrenalin junkie from a young age. Among her teenage passions was motorbiking, and in an interview she even admitted to being convinced to get married at the age of 20 “just for a bike”. The bike, for the record, was a