Rickshawala’s son turns international surfer in Odisha

Odisha Sun Times Bureau

Cuttack, Nov 6:

At an young age of 14 years, a rickshawala’s son in Odisha, S. Dilesh Rao has proved that anything is possible by becoming an international surfer.

Dilesh In an international water sports held in Rameswaram beach in Tamil Nadu recently Rao, a resident of a slum near Buxi Bazar in Cuttack, has defeated the navy commando team to win a bronze medal.

A class 8 student in Christ Collegiate School in Cuttack, Dilesh has grown up in an environment of want and poverty. His father S. Ram Babu a rickshaw driver and mother S. Kammam a housewife, are natives of Andhra Pradesh.  They have three sons, Dilesh is their second son.

His elder brother stays in the village, while his younger brother is studying in school. Under such difficult circumstances Dilesh always wanted to help his family out of penury.

A young boy of his locality, S. Mahesh Rao had taken training under international scuba diver Sabir Bux and won a medal. This created interest in Dilesh’s mind for adventure water sports and he also joined the training of Sabir Bux.  Sabir put him into 8 months of intial training for wind surfing  in Ramchandi based Kalinga Drivers school. He was then sent by Sabir to a Goa based training school for further training.

After his return, Dilesh topped the swimming competition for entry into State Sports hostel. During his stay for 2 years in Bhubaneswar sports hostel, he become an expert in freestyle swimming, breast stroke swimming, butterfly, backstroke, among others.

In the state swimming competition in 2014, he won one gold and two silver medals, but he found that this was not very paying.

He, therefore, started training for adventure water sports with Subir again and became an expert, later imparting training to freshers.

On October 31st in International Aquatic meet in wind surfing in Tamil Nadu he had got bronze medal.

Meanwhile, world famous scuba diver Subir Bux has said that players are interested in wind surfing and stand up pedal boating in Odisha, but the State Olympic Association is not giving any emphasis into this matter. The training of students have to be done by self financing, even after sports secretary talking to the association, they are taking no steps to encourage this sport.

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