On Tuesday evening, Deborah Herold was 0.143 seconds from creating Indian sporting history - that was the difference between her and a first-ever individual women's medal at the Asian Track cycling championships. Deborah finished fourth in the 500m time trial, in a field that included an Olympic bronze medalist.
Deborah had reason to be happy; she had set a new national record, breaking her own in fact. India and cycling don't share a very long or storied history. And, at 21, she's got time on her side to get that medal, and maybe others too. Yet she was glum, the disappointment evident on her face and in her voice. "I really thought I would get a medal," she said.
Back in the 2013 Asian Championships, she became the first Indian woman to win a medal in an individual event in the junior 200m sprint. She then added a bronze in the 500m.
A couple of years later, she became the first Indian cyclist to climb to world no. 4 in individual rankings in 500m, according to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), cycling's global governing body. Her achievement came after the Track Asia Cup in New Delhi in November, where she won three medals, including a gold in the women's elite sprint. Deborah also became India's first individual cyclist to qualify for the Track Cycling World Championships in 2016 -- where only the top 20 cyclists in the world made the cut.
Deborah never started off thinking that she would become a world class competitor. She hails from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which is not particularly known as a hub of sporting excellence.
It is, in fact, a miracle that she is alive at all.
On the day after Christmas in 2004, her village of Kakana was washed away by the Indian ocean tsunami that killed nearly 3,00,000 people. The then 8-year-old girl was swept away from her mother's grasp. She only survived by climbing a palm tree, and was rescued days later when the waters receded.
The tsunami had a role to play in her choice of sport. When the waves reduced her old school to rubble, Deborah was forced to attend another school in a village further inland. That was when she got on a cycle - her father's Atlas - for the first time.
In 2009, when she came to know of a selection camp organized by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Port Blair, she decided to pedal in on her rusty cycle, winning the race and subsequently getting picked for the SAI camp in the Island's capital. She has been racing ever since.
It's a hard sport with little margin for error. Cyclists in the 500m time trial clock upwards of 50kmph. In the 200m sprint on Wednesday --an event she failed to make the quarterfinal round in -- she raced around the wooden velodrome at 60kmph.
At such speeds, athletes need to hold their nerve as they hold on to the tightest of lines on the track. It's something Deborah does effortlessly. Memories of the tsunami might be ten years in the past, but perhaps having lived through that level of devastation, cycling on a track doesn't seem all that hard.
RK Sharma, coach of the Indian cycling team vouches for that. "She is very strong mentally. Once she puts her mind on something, she just doesn't give up," he says.
That mental strength has been put to test over the years. In 2012, when she was first picked in the Indian national camp in New Delhi after winning a gold in the sub junior nationals, she felt lost in the massive city. She didn't speak a word of English and her Hindi was rudimentary. She would communicate for the most part with hand gestures. "I spoke to myself a lot too," she laughs.
Things are a lot easier now, though. While she now is able to speak to her brother Appolonius, who has also made it to the national camp, in Nicobarese, she converses freely in Hindi with her other campmates. With her string of international results, she is a lot more confident now.
"She was very naive back then," says Bikram Singh, who was then a member of the men's cycling team and currently a coach . He recalls the time when Deborah was stopped at the check in counter at the Delhi airport when she was about to catch a flight home, soon after the 2013 Asian Championships.
"She had stuffed all her bags with juice boxes and fruits that we get at the hostel. She wanted to show her family how important she was. She had nearly 60 kilos of additional baggage. She had no idea that you are only allowed to carry 15kg with you. Ultimately, I convinced her to leave some of those behind, but I still had to pay Rs. 8000 to the airline," he laughs.
"Sometimes I miss the young Deborah," says Bikram. He often chides her for cutting off her ponytail and sporting a jagged, spiky bob instead. "I'll tell her 'grow out your hair long. You will look very pretty like that', and she will reply 'Bikram sir, let me win in a medal in the World Championships first,' 'Bikram sir let me qualify for the Olympics first'," he says.
In those early days, Deborah came to rely a lot on then Indian coach, Ruma Chatterjee. A former international cyclist herself, Ruma was a parental figure for the teenager far away from home. "She was like a mother to me. She pretended to be strict, but she cared for me a lot," says Deborah.
It then came as a shock when Ruma was killed in a hit-and-run accident in June 2013, when the team was on an early morning practice session on the Delhi-Noida highway. Deborah says she still prays for her coach. "I asked her to keep me calm ahead of my race," she says.
The loss of a mentor was severe, and the exits of many of her teammates from the camp only enhanced her difficulties.
"It is hard. I stay away from home so long that I think the cycling camp is my family," she says as she fiddles with a friendship band that was given by a fellow camper, who had to drop out after falling performances. Deborah, however, has never wished to leave the camp. "If I am not able to be in the camp, my performances will fall. All I want to do is cycle," she says.
Medals at the World Championships and an Olympic qualification are still a long way away. At her first World Championships in London, she finished last in the 500m, almost 4 seconds behind champion Anastasiia Voinova of Russia.
There is another hitch too. The 500m time trial isn't an Olympic event, having made way for BMX biking in 2006, although two of Deborah's other events - Keirin and sprint - are. But coach Sharma isn't too worried. "It's important to simply get to the World Championships. You see the riders and you know what standard you have to match. Deborah has improved steadily since then. It is a step by step achievement," he says.
Indeed at the 2016 Asian Championships, Deborah completed her race in 36.12 seconds. "She's made an almost one second improvement since then. There we finished sixth. Here, we had a close finish for fourth," he says. Deborah herself has a target in mind. "I need to get to 33 and 34 seconds," she says.
Shaving those seconds off seems to be a stern task, but coach Sharma knows Deborah has time on her side. "There are many areas where she can improve. In this race, even a little bit of imbalance or a missed pedal will cost you 0.1 seconds. You make fewer mistakes with more experience," he says.
She has potential to improve physically too. "She is 62kg while her rivals are all 70kg. She is only 21 and will keep on improving for many years. All her competitors are coming to the end of their careers," Sharma says.
While her coach has plotted out her road ahead, Deborah looked longingly at the medals that were being carried to the podium. "Can I keep one of those?", she asks. "Maybe next time," she tells herself.