When I was in school, the school celebrities who were usually the athletes, were defined by their absence. They came in to write exams, disappeared again, and returned months later with medals and accolades we heard about but never saw earned. Their names travelled faster than they did, and we joked about how easy their lives must be to skip school and play games all day. What we never saw was how much of childhood they traded, and how lonely that kind of discipline can be.
At the recently concluded Track Asia Cup, a UCI Class-2 cycling competition in Chennai, we met four teenage girls who are living a version of the same trade-off. Niraimathi Jesudasan, Jai Jyotshna, Thabitha S and Srimathi Jesudasan move through days split between early-morning training, self-study done in fragments, and long hours spent with coaches, teammates and competition. Much of their time is structured, supervised, and purposeful, leaving little space for anything that does not directly serve the next session on the track.
The Track Asia Cup awards international ranking points towards their Olympic campaigns and features riders from across Asia. Track cycling is raced on steeply banked oval velodromes, where rankings are decided by margins of time and position.
