Life throws challenges of its own. You break down or take them down. Delhi's Saumya Goyal chose the latter.
Born into a business family, Saumya had to fight. First for her dream of playing badminton, then against her health issues and then to manage sailing on two boats - study and playing Badminton.
She tells India TV about her passion for the game, for which she had to lock herself in a room without food for four days. The stomach might have remained empty but she had a dream to fulfill.
Right after her 12th exams, when she wanted to focus on badminton, her parents were on a completely different page. They wanted Saumya to fly to London for a degree. But having liked the sport when she was a three-year-old kid when she used to go with her Grandmother to a badminton club, Saumya sought a year gap from studies to focus on her sport. Her Grandmother, Rashmi Arya, was part of the first Indian women's cricket team and she was the one who introduced Saumya to the sport.
After being introduced to badminton at an early age and started playing it along with her studies, Saumya was serious about focusing only on the sport after her 12th for one year. The idea was not liked by her Dad as he wanted her to pursue a degree. But then the parents eventually agreed. The girl thought she had cleared the challenge and now it is she and her racquet.
But as it happens in life, she was hit by an obstacle. Saumya had twisted her ankle and had an ATFL tear in her gap year and was out for months. She had to fight against the injury.
"It's very ironical, I don't know. It's like destiny or what? But that one year that I took to play and train, I ended up twisting my ankle and I have a condition called super mobility or flexibility in which my ligaments are very, very flexible. So any injury that a normal person would heal probably in a week or two or maximum in a month, my injury took eight months to heal.
"I twisted my ankle my right ankle. I tore my at ATFL. I had surgery for that and it took me one year to heal and it was the same year that I had actually taken for training. So it all just came on together. But in this one year, I went to Hyderabad. It was the first time that I went away from my house to an Academy to play," Saumya says in an exclusive interaction with India TV.
This was not the only health issue that tried pulling her down. Saumya was also diagnosed with Sports-induced asthma a few years ago. The condition is just like normal asthma caused due to physical activity.
"I was 13 or 14 years old and I had my national tournament. I had a train at 6:00 PM. I hadn't played for one week and when I went to play on the court, I started sneezing profusely. I must have sneezed like 100 times in one minute. My eyes were swollen up. My face became red and I couldn't see because there was so much swelling. I couldn't see and I didn't know what was happening to me.
"I rushed home, we got a test and I got to know that I have this condition that's called sports-induced asthma. It basically means normal asthma. You can get an attack anytime," she says.
She did not stop, neither then nor when she suffered the ankle injury. After recovering from her ankle injury, Saumya went to Hyderabad for training and to keep herself in the groove. But when the gap year ended she had to agree to her father's request to travel to London for her Law degree and she is still there in England, managing both studies and the sport.
"I'm still in England. I'm doing my third year now and as I said, I took that one-year gap and after that my dad is like now we need to go and I'm like, OK. My parents said you have to get a degree. You can continue playing there's no issue, but you have to have to do a degree," she says.
Saumya explained how living in England alone was hard for her. "So that first year in university was very hard for me. My Academy is actually two hours away from where I stay. My training session used to be in the evening in England. They used to have evening sessions, from 7:00 to 10:30 or 7:00 to 11:00 in the night.
"I used to leave the house at 5 in the evening, reach my session at 7 and train till 10 or 10:30 in the night and by 12 or 12:30 and I used to come back. Then I used to make my dinner and wash my clothes.
"Then I had to do my college work. I used to sleep by 3-4 and then again wake up at 9:00 AM for college. So it was always a lot of pressure, a lot of things to manage. But then you know, that's how I've always lived, being a student-athlete in my entire life, from school days," she says.
Saumya played for England during the Austria Open, which was her first International but she wants to return to her birth country and play for India.
"No, I want to play for India. In fact, when I played for England I was like, what am I doing? What is going on? But then I had to do that because I was staying in England. It was very tough for me to come back to India, you know, to play for India I had to play in the Indian tournaments and they were happening very often. For me to take a flight and coming back to India every month was getting very hard for me.
"This is my last year that I'm gonna be in England, so I'll be playing for them for this year and then after that, obviously the dream is to play for India and have the Indian flag on your t-shirt, " she added.
The rising star also highlighted her diet and how Evocus has been helping with her water nourishment. "So to be very honest, my diet right now has just been cheating for the last month. I haven't been a good person in terms of my diet, but when it comes to Evocus, as you mentioned, I hate water. I don't drink water at all. And being an athlete, you know how important water is. So Evocus gives four times the hydration and oil. For me, it is a game changer. Like, I'm literally just carrying the water everywhere with me. If I focus every day, it's beneficial for me.
"I'm a pure vegetarian, so right now, as my tournaments are coming up, firstly for me, protein is very important. And I have not been a very big fan of protein powder and everything which I do have to take. Of course, I do take my two scoops or one scoop of protein powder every day, but I as an athlete need at least 100 to 120 grams of protein.
"Like right now, for example, I have a training session from 6:00 to 8:00, so I'll come back, and I'll have a peanut butter toast. You know, that'll give me around 6 to 8 grams of protein. I'll have that with my protein shake. Then I have another session from 9:00 to 11:00, I'll come back and I'll have Nutella, normal ghar ka Khana (homemade food) along with paneer. So again I get my carbs as well and I'm getting my protein as well. Then again, before my session from 2 to 5, I'll have lunch. What lunch looks like me is Dal chawal sabzi like a normal Indian thali. That's about it. A little salad, a bowl of yoghurt maybe. I come back at 5:00. I'll have juice. I'll have some fruit and then around 8:00, I have my dinner," she said.
Her ultimate dream is of playing in the Olympics and winning a gold medal but she knows, she has to fight and win through every obstacle as she has done till now.
