Worthy winner

Law is his profession, athletics his passion and he continues to prove his point in both! At age 51, Dr Rohinton Mehta returned from two international meets in New Zealand with 11 medals from 12 events! Running in rather cold (8° Celsius) conditions, Mehta was one of only two Indians among the 5,000 athletes from 20 countries at the New Zealand Masters Games on February 5, 2012 in Dunedin and the 16th Oceania Masters Athletics Championships in the coastal town of Tauranga where 470 athletes from 14 countries converged from February 5 to 11.

"I had targeted eight podium finishes but stood on it 11 times! The organizers and competitors were very happy to know that someone from India can also run! They in fact very sweetly asked me to distribute three medals to other winners. They also gave me as a memento the New Zealand (national team) colors,” chuckles the lanky veteran. In Dunedin, Mehta was on the field for eight hours competing in seven events in the men’s 50+ age group. "I had prepared for six months to last those eight hours. I wanted to test myself outside my main event (400 m hurdles) and to see if my 51-year-old body can take a full day in the field doing events which are other people’s specialization!” he describes. Body and mind stayed strong and he won five golds (100, 200 and 400 m, high jump and long jump), a silver in the 800 m and a bronze in the discus throw! "I have been running for the past three months with a left glute (buttock muscle) niggle and I had to apply heat to the glute before every run. I had trained also to take part in the 1,500 m (though he had not run this distance for 15 years), but dropped the event as it was the first race of the day and that would have meant taking my body into lactic acid early on (excess lactic acid may lead to burning and pain in the muscles) which I was trying to avoid.”

Rohinton Mehta: master at athletics

The only hiccup, he notes, "in the whole span of two international meets and the long journeys was my rather embarrassing two consecutive false starts” in the 60 m super sprint which meant elimination from that event! The five days of the prestigious Oceania Championships saw him pocketing a gold (400 m hurdles), a photo-finish silver in the 400 m and two bronze medals (200 m and 100 m hurdles). To keep boredom at bay on rest day, Mehta packed in a four-hour hike at Mount Maunganui (an extinct volcano cone popular with tourists)!

Though he is associate general counsel in the legal department of ITC Limited, one of India’s blue chip companies, with a heavy work schedule, Mehta is among the elite masters athletes training with coach Dinanath Maurya. Self-motivated and self-financed, Mehta says he has never sought any monetary help/sponsorship from anyone, including the government or the Masters Athletics Federation of India or his employers who have otherwise been very supportive. "When you spend your own money, you are more serious about your training and each competition. Otherwise you start to use your athletics as a medium for tourism!” The seasoned campaigner now has his eye on meets in South Africa and UK and the World Masters Athletics Championship in Brazil in 2013.