Vikas Gowda
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A profile
Shougat Dasgupta , Nothing to discuss “India Today” 1/8/2016
Vikas Gowda (33)
Athletics, discus, shot put
Achievements: Gold at CWG, Glasgow 2014, silvers at Delhi CWG, 2010; Asian Games, Incheon 2014
Vikas Gowda is a giant. Well over two metres tall, he has the height of an NBA power forward and the bulk of a WWE wrestler. He eats two-and-a-half kilos of chicken a day and drinks protein shakes in buckets. Maybe not buckets literally, but he might as well; it'd be more efficient.
Gowda throws the discus and the shot put. He has thrown the discus further than any Indian man ever has, holding the national record at 66.28 metres. He won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014, becoming the first Indian man since Milkha Singhin 1958 to win an athletics gold.
Given the paucity of Indian medals in the Olympics, and the fact that Gowda made the discus throw finals in London 2012, finishing eighth overall, he should arguably be more celebrated than he is. Until a shoulder injury put his Olympics participation in doubt, he was probably India's biggest (literally) medal prospect in athletics. But Gowda moved to the US at age five. As a result, he has sometimes felt forgotten, neglected, back home.
The US has been important to Gowda. A mathematics major, he was a college athlete at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the famed Tarheels, where he won the national discus throwing title in 2006. It is in the US that Gowda has been able to receive the specialised technical training so intrinsic to an esoteric sport, the sort of training Indian athletes so rarely receive. Gowda trains with John Godina, a former world champion shot putter, who runs throwing academies in California and Arizona. Discus throwing-an iconic event, emblematic of the Olympics in a way sports such as golf, tennis and football can never be-is an extraordinary discipline, full of precise movements, minute elements that the uninitiated cannot possibly observe. And yet the object is so plain, so apparently simple-to throw a 2 kg disc as far as humanly possible. But to throw it as far as Olympic athletes do requires a combination of athletic skills, of speed and power and coordination and explosiveness.
Gowda, like so many athletes and celebrities, is on Twitter. Unlike them, though, he appears to be entirely uninterested, managing just 40 tweets since January 2015, when he joined. There is, though, one extraordinary video of him performing a single leg box jump. He approaches some plyometric boxes stacked high against a wall in a utilitarian gym in a stride or two before taking off with one leg and landing on the boxes with the other. For a towering man, even lumbering, he shows remarkable speed, agility and grace. Qualities that might, should he recover from injury, see him ascend to the podium in Rio, and win him the acclaim and fame in India he has long deserved.
A career
Biju BabuCyriac, Vikas Gowda, discus star, calls it quits, May 31, 2018: The Times of India
Says Does Not Want To Punish His Body Anymore
“The battles that count aren’t for gold medals.” This famous quote from Jesse Owens is surely the one that star Indian discus thrower Vikas Gowda — who announced his retirement on Wednesday — relates to as he battled past many hurdles to win laurels for India over the last 15 years.
Despite living in USA from the age of six, Vikas, the towering 6’9” champion who was born in Mysore, always loved to compete under the Tricolour. He ensured that the Indian flag fluttered high during many international meets as he won gold medals, including in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and at the Asian Championships in 2013 and 2015.
“I was planning to retire after the Asian Games but last week I realized that my body is not responding to training. I was throwing in the region of 61-62m and I was not happy with that. With more load, I could have improved up to 64m but I didn’t want to punish my body anymore,” Vikas told TOI from Maryland, USA.
Asked whether AFI’s call to attend the trials hastened his decision, Vikas said “no”. “If I was throwing in the region of 64-65m then I would not have minded flying down to attend the trials. But as I was doing way below my expectations, I didn’t want to push my case. I was training really hard after last year’s Asian meet but in the end it didn’t click,” he said adding that he never had any issues with AFI except during last year.
The mathematics graduate said he will now focus his energies on continuing his studies. “I will be doing my MBA and let’s see what’s on offer for me (in the corporate sector),” he added. “Me and my dad (Shive Gowda) are planning to start an academy.”
Vikas, who reportedly spent nearly Rs 1 crore per year to fund his training at the World Throws Centre in Arizona, had to repeatedly run from pillar to post to get support. According to sources, his father had to pledge his property to raise loans to ensure that his son’s training went uninterrupted.
2014
Dec 31 2014
ATHLETICS
If every Indian starts training like the towering Mysorean then it would be an altogether different story for Indian athletics. Vikas Gowda has polished his talent over the years and continues to strive to add every centimetre with dedication. The discus thrower emerged the CWG champion in Glasgow with a throw of 63.64m and then pushed two-time defending champion Ehsan Hadadi at the Asiad before settling for silver at 62.58m.
