'A star in the making'

Nine years ago, when a tsunami hit the coast of Andaman & Nicobar, a nine-year-old girl had to take shelter in a forest along with her family. For five days, the girl survived on whatever she could lay her hands on - papaya, coconut and water. Cut to the present. Deborah, having turned in a great performance at the recent Asian Cycling Championship in Delhi, is being heralded as the next big sporting hope for the country. Born in the Car Nicobar Islands, Deborah (she doesn't use her surname, Harela) was spotted by Subhanshu Sen, a coach at the Sports India Authority hostel in Port Blair. She doesn't speak English and communicates in broken Hindi but comes across as a confident teenager. "I'm not scared of anything," says the 17-year-old who in her first major championship won a silver medal and three bronze medals.
 
We meet a day after her medal exploits and she has just returned from shopping in a Delhi mall. "She isn't allowed to have much fun and today is her day off ," says her coach, RK Dahiya. When she first took up sports, it wasn't cycling but long jump which interested her. "I was into all kinds of athletics - long jump, high jump and pole vault. Cycling was something I did for fun," she says. But Sen, her first coach, saw something in her and asked her to come to Port Blair to participate in the state-level championship. Deborah bagged a handful of medals and was the best cyclist by a distance, says Dahiya. He recalls that when Deborah first came to the national camp in Amritsar in 2012, she was a shy, reserved teenager. "She couldn't communicate with anyone and would keep to herself; but on the track, she was a completely different person."

For the last eight months, Deborah has been living in Delhi at the national cycling camp. Initially, she hated the city and just wanted to go back. But slowly she started to settle in and now finds Delhi a "lovely place." The three medals at the Asia Cycling Championship have seen her dealing with spotlight for the first time. "My parents were delighted to see me on TV and encouraged me to do even better," she says with a glint of pride in her eyes. In Nicobar, she lives with her father, mother and a younger brother. She attended a girls' school in Nicobar and finished her 10th standard last year. She will go back to Port Blair and enroll in a school to complete her studies. But her focus remains to qualify for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

Cycling is seen more of a recreational sport in India rather than a competitive one. Onkar Singh, secretary general of the Cycling Federation of India, however, sees Deborah as a star in the making. "She is a prodigious talent and we expect big things from her," he says, and adds that the attention the sport and Deborah have got in the last week is more than any cyclist in India has ever received. All this attention is something Deborah is enjoying immensely. When she goes back home, she expects to be warmly received by friends and family. Talking about the days after tsunami, she recalls how her house was completely destroyed in a matter of seconds. "My school, my house - everything was gone."

She is a hardworking girl, says Dahiya, as he recalls a training camp in the hills about 65 km from Shimla. "Even the men found the treks arduous but she was the first at the camp every morning and took every challenge in her stride," he says. Her daily routine is to get up at 5 am and start training, which involves three hours of cycling, two hours of weight training and other exercise. In the evening, she trains for two hours. Monday is the only day she rests. A big Spiderman fan, she loves watching the superhero film again and again. "She is addicted to TV," her coach chips in, at which she laughs and says "I love watching movies." Ask her about her ambition in life and she says "Olympics. I know it is a sport which doesn't get much attention but I am hopeful I will do my parents and country proud."