World Para Athletics Championships 2024: Sumit Antil says, ‘Had to let go of my phone to train better’
Javelin thrower para athlete Sumit Antil won gold at the recent World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe (Japan). He shares how he overcame phone addiction.
Sumit Antil, who has retained his gold in the F64 javelin event at the championships, always had his eyes on the goal, but feels he strayed away from the path somewhere down the line. To reach where he is today, Antil shares how he completely let go of social media, which is handled by his brother. “In 2023, I got a phone addiction... Now that there are only three months left (for Paris Olympics), I had to have a single-minded focus. Iss baar basic gold toh aa gaya but my performance wasn’t as good as I could have given. Bas ab training apno ke saath karni hai, jahan security mehsoos ho, be it among my peers like Sandeep bhai and Yogesh, or my coach,” shares the 26-year-old.
He gets nostalgic thinking about the good old college days when he was student of BCom (Prog) at Ramjas College, Delhi University, and says, “Back then, nobody in my college knew that I was an athlete. I just quietly went for training and barely attended any classes. My only focus was to become a professional back then and didn’t want any VIP treatments from my peers, or have my friends see me an an ‘international khiladi’ or anything.”
Though he didn’t represent the varsity then, and had to even repeat his final year only to graduate in 2019, he still remembers the training camp in Finland that was organised for the Jakarta Palembang 2018 Asian Games. Now, he wishes to go down that path and says, “I am planning on enrolling for MBA, and this time maybe I’ll participate in the university games to seek this experience. God willing, it won’t clash with the Paralympics. But I don’t regret not getting this experience as a DU student. Uss time agar focus nahi hota toh aaj main yahan nahin hota!”