Paris 2024: Raj Kumar’s surreal journey to the hockey bronze

Raj Kumar Pal is overwhelmed with the adulation he has received ever since he landed here on Saturday morning. Sweets, garlands, sound of dhols, meeting dignitaries, the 26-year-old had never experienced such a welcome.
With a gleaming Olympic bronze medal hanging from his neck, he experienced the same on Sunday as he travelled to Varanasi. After being honoured by luminaries, the 26-year-old started an hour-long journey to the small village of Karampur in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district – his home.
It was an emotional reunion for the family as his mother and two brothers held the medal and remembered his father, who had passed away in 2011, and the hardships that followed.
Raj Kumar was a teenager, having started playing hockey a couple of years prior, when his father, a truck driver, passed away in a road accident. What followed were two years of hardship when the family of four had no breadwinner. Hockey, for all three brothers, had to take a backseat.
Witnessing the financial crisis of the Pal family, which lived in a mud house, Raj Kumar’s mentor and Karampur hockey academy owner Tej Bahadur Singh decided to step in. For two years, Tej Bahadur, whose truck Raj Kumar’s father used to drive, supported the Pal family financially, until his eldest brother Jokhan got a job in the Army. The situation got better when the second brother Raju got a job in the Railways, both due to hockey.
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“When my brothers started earning, they told me to not worry about anything and just focus on hockey as it was because of hockey they got their jobs. It was only after I was able to play freely without having to think about my next meal,” says Raj Kumar.
Though the Karampur academy had produced around 300 players, none reached the national level until his brother Raju, who was selected for the national camp a decade ago. However, he never made it to the core group and continued playing for the Railways.
But Raj Kumar’s skills with the stick really impressed Sports Authority of India (SAI) scouts who selected him for their Regional Centre in Lucknow in 2012. It was in the Uttar Pradesh capital that the midfielder truly started developing his game.
After a series of impressive performances in the domestic circuit, it was former Hockey India high performance director David John who spotted Raj Kumar at the Nationals and selected him for the senior national development camp in 2017. Two years later, he made the core group before finally making his India debut in February 2020.
But not getting selected for Tokyo Olympics made him realise that he needed to up his game. Raj Kumar knew was that his strengths were his attacking instincts, fitness and stick work which made India chief coach Craig Fulton put him in a group with Shamsher Singh and Gurjant Singh – with the trio substituting each other in either the forward line or attacking midfielder position.
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“But I was weak without the ball, especially during defence. I couldn’t follow the structure,” said Raj Kumar, who idolises teammate and statemate Lalit Kumar Upadhyay.
Raj Kumar started spending extra sessions on his weakness, watching hours and hours of footage, working with the analytical coach to improve his game. With more games, the midfielder kept improving to the point that Fulton selected him for Paris Olympics over more experienced seniors.
In Paris, India skipper Harmanpreet Singh ended as the tournament’s top scorer due to his expertise in penalty corners (PC). But it was Raj Kumar who kept earning India PCs throughout the two weeks in the French capital.
He was especially brilliant in the quarter-final where India beat Great Britain despite being down to 10 men for three quarters. It was the UP player who scored the winning goal in the shootout.
“It feels surreal. My family has sacrificed a lot. It was about time I paid them back with a medal,” he concluded.