In the maiden edition of the IHF Wheelchair Handball World Championship, India were between one of the six participating teams, finishing on the sixth place, with one win in six matches.

That did not deter the Asian side, which also took part in the inaugural World and European Wheelchair Handball Championship, where they ended up on the fourth place, improving on a regular basis.

Now, India are back at the 3rd IHF Wheelchair Handball World Championship, and the common denominator in their teams has been the captain, Javed Choudhari, a player who has slowly become a star in his own country and a true leader on and off the court.

Being one of the few India players who speaks English, Choudhari was helping with the translation during the classification of his teammates, but he is also the heart and soul of the team, and an embodiment of the spirit of fair-play and determination promoted by wheelchair handball.

Choudhari always had a passion for dance and sports and he always was an active person. But then life handed him a tough set of cards, when his leg was amputated, after a terrible road accident, which saw his bike ram in another bike while cruising through a narrow road in his village Lonar, in the Maharashtra province in India.

He waited eight hours for an ambulance and, by that time, the chances of saving his leg were absolutely gone. Some might have stopped there. But Choudhari decided he is not going to let his accident dictate the terms of how is going to live his life. Therefore, he continued playing sports, first entering the trials for the India wheelchair basketball national team.

Now, since 2022, he has been serving as the captain of the India wheelchair handball national team, leading by example, and being there for every major international competition for the Asian side, which aims to become better and better.

“Oh, it's amazing, after two years coming back to wheelchair handball and it's an amazing feeling on the same court, same enthusiasm, same energy of every player, but I can say that every team improved a lot, so it's a tough competition this year. I think the competition is better now than it was because all the teams are training so hard these two years,” says Choudhari.

 

 

 

 

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“Now, the IHF started this World Championship so often, so players are working so hard every  year. And we are proud to be here.”

Choudhari is not only a wheelchair handball and a wheelchair basketball player, he also retained his passion for dancing. And he continued doing that, becoming a true star in a huge country like India, even becoming a contestant on reality TV show Dance Deewane.

“Before the accident I was a dancer, but when I became a person with a disability, so many people came and told me, hey man, sorry, now you can't dance, you can't be the person you were. That thing bothered me a lot and I put some weight after my accident, so the first thing which helped me to stand up is my dance,” says the India captain.

Therefore, Choudhari came back and started dance classes again, with over 5,000 students in his hometown and reenergised himself back to life, proving that a disability does not stand in the way of living a normal life and creating lifetime memories.

“That's helped me to understand my capability, that helped me to understand that I'm born to fly, nobody can stop me, so dance is the thing that helped me to bring all the energy, it just makes me alive, so that's how the dance journey started again for me,” adds Choudhari.

That also meant the Choudhari enrolled into different auditions for different reality shows, where he competed against 40,000 dancers in India.

“Every time they narrowed down until the last 12 weeks, I was in the top 6, so becoming the only one person with a disability with all the normal people is just tough, because I like the respect I'm getting from that, because the opponents whom I dance against, they are a bit scared of me, they see the competition is coming, they didn't see my disability,” says Choudhari.

While dancing remains Choudhari’s huge passion and drive, wheelchair handball has also been a part of his life in the last two years. He has been constantly improving in a sport he did not know much about and now he is proud about India’s growth, as the Asian side lost against Portugal, 0:2 (5:8; 6:8) in the opener at Egypt 2024, but pressured the European side until the last seconds.

“You can see how much we improved, at the same time the Portugal improved a lot, so I can say that they play better than they were in Six-a-side two years ago. We can see the difference, the score was so different when we met two years ago, but this time it wass neck to neck,” concludes Choudhari.