New Delhi: Google today paid homage to Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav with a special Doodle on his 97th birth anniversary.
He is best known as a wrestler who won a bronze medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He was the first athlete from independent India to win an individual medal in the Olympics.
Born on this day in 1926, KD Jadhavinherited his athleticism from his father, one of the village’s best wrestlers.
At the age of 10, Jadhav began training with his father to become a wrestler after excelling as a swimmer and runner.
Starting his wrestling career in 1948, he first came into lime-light at the 1948 London Olympics when he finished 6th in the flyweight category. He was the first Indian to achieve such a high a position in the individual category until 1948. Despite being new to wrestling on a mat as well as the international rules of wrestling, Jadhav’s 6th-place finish was no mean feat at that time.
For the next four years, Jadhav trained even harder for the Helsinki Olympics where he moved up one weight category and participated in the bantamweight category (57 kg) which saw wrestlers from twenty-four different countries. He went on to defeat wrestlers from countries like Mexico, Germany and Canada, before losing his semi-final bout, but he came back stronger to win the bronze medal which made him the first ever individual Olympic medalist of independent India.
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