The first Indian to win a medal at a cycling World Championship. That's how Esow Alben burst into the Indian sporting consciousness in 2019, when he won silver in the world junior championships.
Now 21, he became the first Indian to medal in a top European race this past fortnight, when he won bronze in the men's keirin at the Finale Bahnen-Tournee in Germany.
Esow wasn't by himself in this European sojourn. With him were Manipur's Ronaldo Singh and Rojit Singh - team-mates in that historic 2019 junior Worlds - and Andaman and Nicobar state mate David Beckham. They are all 21 or below and all fully confident they are on the right track, as it were, to becoming world beaters.
That's a first for India, where track cycling is not a sport with much history. India has never competed in it at the Olympics and were never really medal contenders at the Asian level... till now.
New National Record ��#Cycling��#TOPSchemeAthletes @esowalban & Ronaldo shine at Bahen-Tournee Dudenhofen, ����
���� Cyclist Esow Alban finished 5⃣th in Sprint event, breaking the National Record in Outdoor track event with a time of 10.21 secs. pic.twitter.com/98uBnPU286
- SAI Media (@Media_SAI) May 29, 2023
Powered by these four friends, India now have a team, a squad, capable of competing - and winning medals. Becoming Olympians in Paris next year isn't a dream too unrealistic.
The four of them talk a lot with each other, share laughs, exchange banter and tips. It's a proper team.
"We always support each other," says David. "If [anyone] does something wrong and we notice it, we immediately try and understand it, and then correct it together... you know the small minute technical things that only a fellow cyclist would notice. Some things that even a coach may not be able to see, let alone provide inputs for. And everybody does this with everybody else. As a team we're good, we try to lift each other's spirits."
David had started off a footballer, a sport so interlinked with the name his father had chosen for him as a fan of the England great. Even though he had cycled as a kid, he'd taken to football seriously was with the under-15 team of FC Goa harbouring dreams of playing professionally -- when he had returned to Car Nicobar following the death of his grandmother in 2016.
At the time he had to make a choice: football or cycling. He chose the latter and by 2017 he was in Delhi, in the junior national camp.
Ronaldo, meanwhile, never played football. The story goes that he'd been named so because at the time little Ronaldo was being born, another little Ronaldo (Ronaldinho) was creating magic at the 2002 World Cup. But he told the Sportstar that he never played the sport because his father told him his 'knees would get misaligned'.
Cycling came about when at 14 he was selected for the Delhi centre, after simply giving it a shot at the trials held in Manipur.
Esow, the most decorated of the lot, had taken up cycling because his mother had asked him 'instead of playing in the gully, why not try and become a professional sportsman?'. He had tried cycling but was told he was too short and sent to try rowing. "But all my friends had started cycling and I loved watching them. I got a bit jealous watching them," he says with a laugh.
He came back, worked his way into the state team, and made the sub-junior nationals for road cycling. "I didn't get a medal," he says, "and the rowing coach said 'this isn't for you, leave it'. Then it became a challenge for me, I had to show the coach that I can do this..." Boy, has he shown that coach.
David and Esow giggle constantly when on call with this writer. It's like they're sharing a running inside joke, the kind you see amongst best friends in college. The conversation breaks down for a couple of minutes when one brings up the subject of girlfriends and neither can stop ribbing each other about it. It's a happy break, and their laughter is infectious. It also gives you a brief glimpse into what it must be day-in and day-out for them. Train till your legs can't move, squeeze out every last bit of energy... but do it all with a laugh.
"[Training] alone is boring. If you don't have a training partner for track cycling, you don't have that spirit also," says David. "There's a challenge when you're with the team, you're looking to best each other and prove yourself."
David and Esow have common factor that linked their early love for cycling. While Andaman and Nicobar have a track cycling pedigree dating back to the 1980s (When SAI's Special Area Games programme had gone to the islands looking to develop kayaking and canoeing and ended up realising this was going to be the track cycling capital of India), there is a common name mentioned by both when asked why they took up cycling so seriously in the first place: "Deborah didi".
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Deborah Herold was India's first cycling superstar. She had been the first Indian to win a medal at the junior Asian Championships and then the senior one. She was the first Indian to even qualify for a World Championships. She had climbed to No 4 in the world in the UCI rankings (in the 500m time trial event) - still the highest ranked Indian in the history of track cycling.
In 2004, when the tsunami struck, she had survived for nearly five days by climbing and clinging on to a palm tree, by herself. Both Esow and David had seen her cycling on television, seen her attending victory "rallies" held in Car Nicobar in her honour. "We'd think of her records, her example, and move forward," says Esow.
Deborah, though, hasn't been in the Indian team for a while now. And she's been on a downward spiral internationally ever since she climbed to that historic ranking.
In June last year, she gave an interview to the Indian Express that partly explained it... she spoke about how she was no longer in the team because of a breakdown in relationship with then national coach RK Sharma and his assistant Gautamani Devi. She said she was "slapped" twice, "ridiculed", and "harassed" for years by the duo. She had also said "the toxic atmosphere" in the team under Sharma "did not allow cyclists to perform to their potential".
This had been days after Sharma was dismissed following serious charges of sexual misconduct being raised against him. Deborah, meanwhile, still isn't part of the national team.
The worst thing? This wasn't even the first sexual misconduct charge to hit the Indian cycling world. In 2018, the administrator-in-charge at the SAG centre in Port Blair had been arrested by local police after at least three girls reported him for sexual harassment. That incident had seen parents withdraw their children from the hostel programme, which now lies more or less abandoned.
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Despite it all, no other place in India continues to produce the kind of cycling talent that those magnificent islands do. And that's with the state of the sporting infrastructure -- even with the hostel running, the Port Blair centre hadn't exactly been up to scratch.
Over the past few years, there have been multiple reports of the coaches there being underpaid, their salaries arriving late, of outdated equipment and cycles that have suffered the worst of the saline winds for almost two decades. The main attraction - the (outdoor) velodrome - remains in a permanent state of disrepair.
Neither Esow nor David can stop themselves from laughing bitterly when talking about the velodrome. "You'll start thinking you have come for off-road riding," says David. "If we ride on that track, we'll get flung out!"
"If this news gets published maybe..." he starts, before checking himself as Esow lets out a few resigned chuckles in the background. "We've said it a lot of times, asked them to make a good track there... we just keep hearing 'yes, it'll be made'. How much can we complain? So, we've decided that it's better that we adjust with what we have and see what we can do later."
Both know that if they hadn't been shifted to the Delhi indoor velodrome early, they wouldn't be where they are now.
Ronaldo agrees about the general state of racing infra. "It's really tough to race in [most Indian] tracks as we get injured a lot [even] during competitions," he says before talking about an aspect that's an even more basic level: the culture of cycling itself in the nation. "In India, cycling is not encouraged, and people don't think about cyclists on the road. Even the government does not do anything for cyclists in India -- In foreign countries, governments support cyclists and provide separate cycling lanes and ensure that they are safe."
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When speaking to this writer, though, all their focus had been on maximising the benefits of training in Europe. Sharma had been their coach ever since they got into the junior set-up, so the past year hasn't been a smooth transition for the youngsters.
"There was a little trouble after the coaching change, we used to train a little differently compared to what we do now," says David. "It's good now because we're getting to learn something new... he introduces new training methods so that's good. Even the coaches [at the various tracks in Europe that they visit] help us when we are training." There is also the transition from junior to senior level. Esow laughs when talking about the jump since those junior exploits five years ago. "Everything is tougher," he says. "In juniors there's a different pace, we can't reach the level required for seniors just like that... it's a different level itself that requires a [much higher] training load. So, it takes time."
That's the case in all senior events, he says. It's all quality opposition, guys who've been there, done that and they push you to your limits. Take for example the Finale Bahnen-Tournee. The two racers who finished above him? World Championships medallists Marc Jurczyk and Sebastian Vigier (who is also an Olympic medallist).
"The pressure is definitely more, and the mental [toll] increases as well. Our training schedule changes, the load increases, so do us our gym work. We have training from 10-6 these days [and its high intensity]. We fatigue a bit because there's not this much load in the juniors."
Esow, though, has never been one to back down. He, and his teammates, had a bad Commonwealth Games showing last year, but bounced back almost immediately - Esow became the first Indian to reach a senior World Championship semifinal, missing the keirin final by just 0.0005 seconds. And now the medal in Germany. He credits a lot of it to the European training-cum-competition trip they were on.
The competitions may be "very tough" he says, but there is a massive difference from training there rather than in India. "The difference is the environment. Sports racing and culture. That makes a big impact. There's a positivity in the atmosphere."
"Plus, there are races and that's a big benefit," he says. "In India we get one event per year, the national championships, that's it. We can't meet our training goals like that. In Europe, we get a race every weekend."
The outcome: an increase in confidence levels, and learning the ability to handle pressure, two qualities that can make all the difference at the highest level.
"It's taken a bit of time to adjust," admits Esow. "But it's good progress." The Finale Bahnen-Tournee performance clear evidence of that improvement.
With all this, Esow knows expectations are building. It's been that way ever since that record-breaking junior Worlds four years ago. "Expectations are there, but we just feel we must do our best. At the end of the day, the medals are on us... it depends on how we are training, how we manage the load," he says.
The clarity of thought is striking. "At times we didn't keep expectations only because that's how tough the training is now. I'd reach the [senior Worlds] semis but that was just so different. It's very difficult. But now as we train more, we also start to keep expectations. It's a big thing for us and we know we can do better."
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The cyclists now have two big events coming up this year - the Asian Championships (where India won a record nine medals last year) and the Asian Games.
The Championships (June 14-19) gain greater prominence because winning there gets them qualifying points for the Paris Olympics. The other events where they can gain points are the UCI Nations Cup (three of those remain in the qualifying period) and the far tougher prospect of the World Championships.
Paris remains their ultimate aim, but for now it's one step at a time. And that starts in Kuala Lumpur at the Asian Championships.