A father's wrestling background, a loan for her first cycle and a broken jaw at 14 shaped the rider now representing India on the continent's biggest stage.
Pooja Danole is going to the Asian Games. That sentence, for a cyclist from Kolhapur whose father took a loan to buy her first bike, carries more weight than it lets on.
Speaking to The Free Press Journal in an exclusive interview, Danole traced the path from a small-town household to a sports hostel in Balewadi, Pune, and now, an international start line.
Her sporting instincts came from home. Her father wrestled. So does her brother. She herself tried swimming young, then wrestling, then triathlon, before a school sports teacher, who happened to be a former student of her father's, pushed her toward a district-level cycling competition. She won a medal there. State-level medals followed. Then came the call-up to Balewadi.
The cost of a first cycle
None of it came easy. Danole told FPJ that professional cycling demands money her family didn't have lying around, bikes, travel, nutrition, coaching. Her father borrowed money to get her a personal cycle before anyone could promise it would lead anywhere. That's the kind of bet parents make on faith, not certainty.
Her mother gave her something else entirely. "Be like a lion. Be fearless," she'd tell her, and the family took to calling Danole their little lion. She says she's tried to live up to that since.
The setbacks were real. At 14, Danole broke her jaw and spent nearly three months on liquids only, an ordeal she calls scary at that age. Years later, at the senior level, she went through shoulder surgery. Both knocked her back physically. Both, she says, taught her patience and how to return not just fit but mentally ready.
Why she rides
Strip away the medals and rankings, and Danole says cycling is simpler than that for her, the wind on her face, the joy of being on the bike. That's the part that keeps her going on the days nothing else does.
The Asian Games dream itself is recent. Danole says she started seriously believing it was possible around November last year, partly because of a journalist who kept telling her the target was within reach even when she wasn't sure herself.
There's no confirmed date for her event in this piece, and FPJ's interview doesn't specify her discipline within cycling or the exact Asian Games edition. What's clear is the arc, district medal to state medal to Balewadi to a continental stage, built on a father's loan, a mother's line about lions, and two recoveries that could have ended things earlier. Now the race itself is what's left to watch.
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