A 19-year-old youth from Bhayandar has bagged a place in the prestigious India Book of Records (IBR) for achieving maximum number of certificates with medals in international, national, state, divisional district level Karate tournaments organized by various federations. Karan Tanaji Pawar (19) has so far bagged 52 certificates and medals in various championships.
The younger of two siblings, Karan is a first year student in sports management. Interestingly, Karan Pawar has been trained by a 41-year-old old local auto rickshaw driver- Vinod Namdev Kadam. In an admirable show of community spirit, Kadam who himself is a Third Dan Black Belt, has been training civic school children to pursue their passion of Karate, for the past seven years, and that too, without charging a single penny.
“I love Karate. Sadly, it’s still not an Olympic sport. Since it’s my dream to win an Olympic medal for my country, I am also getting trained for boxing. I will remain indebted to Vinod Sir for selflessly training students like me who belong to humble backgrounds, hardly having any resources to enroll themselves for the expensive training sessions.” said Karan.
The younger of two siblings, Karan’s father makes parts of mixers. “We are very proud of Karan's achievement and thankful to Vinod Sir who despite all odds has been striving hard to train the municipal school students.” said local municipal corporator- Prabhat Tai Patil.
Vinod Kadam strongly believes that there is no lack of Karate talent in the twin city and the priority for sports administrators should be to tap them at a right age. Apart from other successes, students trained by Kadam have already made the twin-city proud by bagging medals in various national level tournaments in Tang Soo and other forms of martial arts.
