The air was thick with excitement. Seven-year-old Ridhya had braved through her 75 metre swim, three kilometre bike ride and was now at the last leg of the Ironkid triathlon, a one kilometre run. As she was finishing the final lap, her father came close to the sidelines and said, “You are almost there, just a bit more to go, you can do it!” His words gave her such a boost that she launched into a sprint, all the way to the finish line.

For Ridhya, those words of encouragement from her father, her biggest cheerleader, were more than golden. He completed the Ironman triathlon, which includes a two-kilometre swim, a 90 km bike ride, and a 21 km run. Her father is her inspiration, her trainer and her best friend. Inspired by her father’s spirit for sports and driven by his enthusiasm for finding new things for her to learn, young Ridhya has many feathers on her cap. She represents her school in swimming championships and practices various martial arts such as Karate and Kobudo — with her father!

When they are not training together, they are making up stories, watching the sky and sometimes even playing in the park with their friends. Along with his wife Bhavya, he tries to teach his daughter about the world through imagination and creativity, by simply acknowledging and encouraging her curiosity.

‘I want to fly!’

Rijesh Ramachandran works as an Assistant General Manager at the Reserve Bank of India. He fiercely pursues his passion for sports and shares it with his daughter, who spends most of her free time with her father. As his wife Bhavya works as a cloud engineer in the evenings, Rijesh is Ridhya’s official partner-in-crime. When The Better India asked him how he manages to fill all these roles in the twenty hours of a day, he says, “I wake up early. I like to finish my sports training well before work so that I can spend the evenings with my daughter. The discipline I get from my training in sports helps me manage work and life efficiently.”

Ridhya used to watch her father train in awe. They spent a lot of time together, and he enjoys exploring her inquisitiveness and imagination. For instance, they spent an evening following a trail of ants, watching how they marched in synchronisation — just to quench her curiosity about how they lived.

When Ridhya was around five, she told her father, “I want to fly.” He showed her videos of parkour and explained that through training, she too could perform these stunts and skills. This piqued her interest, leading her to start karate classes. Eventually, she turned to swimming, cycling and finally to competing in a triathlon with her father, all the way in Vietnam.

The Ironman and Ironkid training

Rijesh started training for triathlons with a professional academy in Chennai........

© The Better India