On the right track
If running is the mother of all sports, what can you achieve with it apart from physical fitness of course? Come November 6, and the city will witness thousands of children running together for the 17th edition of the Salwan Marathon at the Army Eques-trian Centre, Brar Square. An important feature of the mega run is the participation of visually challenged children.
An architect by profession, Inder Dutt Salwan, who’s also the architect of this marathon, has been running for the past few decades and hundreds of underprivileged kids from the city have been accompanying him. “We believe in integration and that’s why we thought of bringing in visually challenged children, who have otherwise been restricted to reading books in Braille. With this run, we aim to introduce them to their inner strength,” he says.
A student of Lady Shri Ram College, Rinku is a Salwan Marathon winner. She says that this win means a lot to her. “I have always been interested in outdoor sports and athletics, but never actually got a chance to go for this in a formal way. So, this was in a way, the first of a kind exposure for me. The track was a different terrain and a trained athlete was arranged to be my running partner,” explains Rinku, who’s from Uttrakhand and stays at the National Association for Blind (NAB) hostel in Delhi.
According to Shantha Rangarajan, who teaches at NAB, and is also the co-ordinator for Integrated Education for the Differently-abled, this event paves the way for visually impaired students to enter the mainstream. “While these students don’t have any formal training in such sports, they play cricket and other outdoor sports in an informal way. We are glad to say that 11 of our students have won prizes in this marathon in the past,” she adds.
In an effort to reach out to the student community, this year the Salwan Marathon has tied up with the Special Olympics Bharat and NGO Butterflies in order to get intellectually challenged students and streetkids to participate in the run. They have also coordinated with schools for visually impaired students across India. UNICEF and FICCI are supporting the marathon this year and aim to inspire children through the power of running.
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