“Heroes were never born, They were made”
Somewhere in Kuala Ketil ,Kedah, Malaysia once lived a poor 13 year-old boy named Suresh Selvathamby. He was born and bred in an unwell to-do family. His father, M. Selvathamby was working as a lorry driver and his mother, Dewani Chandran was working in a factory. He also has 2 younger sisters, Karthiyani and Kalidsan. Like many other teenagers, they all hoped to study well, get good grades, make their parents proud, hang out with friends on the weekends, living a typical teenage dream. However, Suresh may not have anticipated the events that were lining up in his way that year.
Just like any typical day, Suresh was following his father to Johor to make a delivery until the latter veered onto the divider and collided with a parked steamroller at Slim River in Perak on the North-South Expressway.That accident costed Suresh’s leg to be amputated, and forced him to depend on a prosthetic leg for the rest of his life.
If that is not devastating enough, a month after the accident,one of his younger sister, Karthiyani fell victim to another road accident and took her last breath on Earth. It was reported that the 12-year old girl was knocked down by a motorcycle when she was about to hop onto the school bus. She was immediately put to eternal rest on the spot that day in 2010.
It was the darkest moment in Suresh’s life. His spirit was utterly shattered, his life filled with misery as every second went by. What really pulverized him internally was the fact that his father left their family in the midst of those tragedies, leaving the already disheartened mother to take all the responsibility in raising the family, sole and single-handedly. Till date, the reason and whereabouts of Suresh’s missing father have not surfaced.
The pain did not end there, even years after the tragedy, many living around them have criticized Suresh and his family. Harsh and inhumane comments such as “ Suresh is such a useless and troublesome son” or “ Suresh cannot even help his mom in anything, only giving her hard times is the only thing he can do.” Especially the fact that Suresh is the eldest son in the family, those comments were like a dagger, piercing through his heart as a daily reminder of being a failure.
After a series of distressing events which took place in his life and was at the brink of giving up, a friend of the 18 year-old Suresh introduced him to a Kedah state coach in para archery named Puvaneswaran. It was at this moment where Suresh stepped foot into his archery journey. Suresh fell immensely in love with archery and brought back his first ever win for a silver medal at the 2012 Para Sukma Games held in Pahang as his first quantum leap .
Then in 2014, he was drafted into the Malaysia’s Para-athlete National Team. Marzuki Zakaria was his coach and had taught Suresh everything he could to produce a champion.
It was then at the World Archery Para Championships held in s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands from 3rd to 9th June, where the 27 year-old national archer, Kedah-born Suresh Selvathamby, defeated the 2015 world champion, USA’s Eric Bennett in five sets, won a gold medal and triumphed as the new world champion in the Recurve Men’s Open category in 2019. Suresh made history in Malaysia to be the first ever Gold Medalist in the Archery Para Championship !
Not long after, for his victory at the World Championships, Suresh was awarded with a total of RM80,000 under the ‘Skim Hadiah Kemenangan Sukan” or also known as Sports Victory Prize Scheme (SHAKAM). At one of the interviews, he proudly said that he can finally buy a house for his family as they were renting all these while. Suresh finally now has the ability to save his family from the shackles of poverty and take care of his mother till her final days. The moment of pride, evidence to his success after everything he has been through was when he said this :
“ To all the critics who underestimated my poor family and accused me of not taking care of my mother and my job was only shooting arrows, look at me now. Suresh Selvathamby, son of Dewani Chandran, is a world champion! ”.
His journey did not stop there as he is now one of the 22 Malaysian athletes which will be at ‘battle’ representing Malaysia in the upcoming Tokyo Paralympics 2020. As for the latest news, after Suresh returned to Malaysia from the Para-Archery European Cup in Czech Republic in July 2021, he has been living and training non-stop at the National Sports Complex. Due to the current pandemic situation, he was restricted from going back home, so he could only video call his family. He hoped all his effort would reward him with a gold medal from the Tokyo Paralympics soon.
While it might seem like an overnight fame to many, however, if we would to take a step back and take a glimpse into his excruciating past and journey, we would really acknowledge that Suresh is not just any poor kid from Kedah, but an inspiring tough and fearless fighter. Despite hitting rock bottom, all the hurtful words thrown at him and the loss of his leg, father and sister, he still kept going. That burning spirit to survive in him is what we all should admire. For this I believe he should be more widely recognized and appreciated, as his story would potentially inspire many paralyzed youth out there, to never give up as we never know what our future holds, the possibilities are endless, as long as our spirit lives on. Just like Suresh, he never saw his lost leg as a limitation, but an opportunity to be his country’s first National Para-athlete Archer!
By VICCENTIA PACHAMUTHU
