Piyush Raj grew up in the village of Banjari in the hilly district of Rohtas which borders Jharkhand. If Bihar carried the reputation of a sporting backwater, Banjari felt like the backwaters of the backwaters. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

As a 15-year-old, Piyush Raj travelled from his village in the hinterlands of Bihar to the state capital Patna, armed with nothing but the dream to become an athlete. When he quickly found himself out of money in pursuit of what too many deemed an outlandish goal, the teenager worked in the canteen of the Patliputra Sports Complex in exchange for room and board. He’d clean dishes, swab floors and prepare and serve food to the athletes in the sports hostel while training alongside them.

It was a job that he hid from his family. More than a few mocked him.

Piyush never wavered.  “Koi kaam aapke sapne se chhota nahi hai (there’s no work that’s smaller than your dream)” he tells Sportstar.

Four years later, Piyush’s dream is reality.

He’s not the subject of mockery but seen as inspiration for his state. On Monday, Piyush now 19, created history.

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When Sportstar spoke to him that evening, he still had around his neck the bronze medal he’d won in the men’s 4x400m relay race at the Asian Junior Championships in Hong Kong. In a competition where India won 10 golds, a bronze might not seem extraordinary but it is a special medal if only for the promise it holds.

Running the first leg of the relay, Piyush clocked a 45.9 second split providing the start that helped his team set a new Indian junior record en route a podium finish. More importantly, it made him the first athlete from Bihar to win an international athletics medal at any level.

For a state with little history of excellence in track and field – and often treated as a bit of a joke in domestic competition – Piyush’s medal is proof that there’s plenty of talent waiting to be unearthed.

Unlikely pioneer

The 19-year-old readily admits he makes for an unlikely pioneer.

He grew up in the village of Banjari in the hilly district of Rohtas which borders Jharkhand. If Bihar carried the reputation of a sporting backwater, Banjari felt like the backwaters of the backwaters.

“Our area was famous at one time because it was part of the Naxal belt.”

The only running was done by boys looking to prepare for the army recruitment exam. As a 14-year-old, Piyush joined them if only for fun. It soon became obvious that even at that young age he was better than boys several years older.

“When I started beating everyone, the older boys told me I should try to become a serious runner,” he recalls.

He was inspired even further when he watched the movie ‘ Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’ – on the legendary quarter miler Milkha Singh. Piyush got a poster of that movie. He says it’s still somewhere in his home.

He wanted to run. But in Banjari, no one really knew what being an athlete meant. Facilities were limited. There was obviously no coach.

Eventually, he found another runner from a village 30 kilometres away. “I would take a bus to his village and we’d train together.”

Slowly, his ambitions grew. “My training partner told me there was this thing called the state championships and that there were much better facilities in Patna.”

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There was one problem. Piyush’s father had passed away in a road accident when he was just nine. In order to make ends meet, Piyush and his older brother operated a flour grinding mill out of the family’s home in Banjari while his mother worked with a self help group.

“Neither me nor my brother could operate the mill by ourselves. So if one of us was to move, we would have to it would have to shut down.”

His mother though encouraged him to go. “ Kuch nahi tha. Bas junoon ki Milkha Singh jaise banna hai, (I had nothing. Just the passion that I had to become like Milkha Singh).”

Junoon (passion), as it turns out, wasn’t enough. He wasn’t eligible for the hostel and he didn’t have enough money to take an accommodation on rent outside the Sports Complex. He quickly ran through the 3000 rupees he had brought with him from home.

Desperate, Piyush says he spotted a senior looking official doing his rounds.

“I didn’t know his name. I only asked him, ‘Sir, please give me a chance. Give me a job and I’ll do that so that I can make money which would allow me to train.”

That official turned out to be Raveendran Sankaran, a former international athlete himself and, at that time, the Director General and CEO of the Bihar State Sports Authority.

An impromptu test was conducted – in the 800m. Two laps around the track. It was the first time Piyush had run that distance. He remembers he clocked 2.04.00. It was enough. Not for the first time, Piyush would ace an event with next to no preparation. But as a minor he couldn’t be given a job. Instead, he was offered the chance to work in the hostel canteen.

It was hard but Piyush couldn’t be bothered.

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“I would train from 5 am to 8 am. Then work until 3 pm in the kitchen. I’d go again to train in the evening and then I’d work once more from 7 pm to 9pm at night. I would eat what was already there in the kitchen. I didn’t tell my family about this because they would have called me back. But I only thought what an incredible chance I had got,” he remembers thinking.

Four months later, he took part in his first Bihar state U-16 championships, winning medals in the 300m and 100m. It was enough to earn him the chance to compete in trials to select the state team for the East Zone U-16 championships.

‘ Kahaani me twist’

Just as things were starting to look up, another setback.

“ Kahani me ek aur twist aa gaya, (There was a twist in the tale)”. Needing to place in the top two in the trials to be selected, Piyush ended up finishing third after twisting his ankle.

He was desperate to make it to the team. There was one more event in which he could take part – the boys hexathlon. The event featured the 100m, long jump, shot put, high jump, javelin and a 1000m run.

“I’d never even touched a javelin before. I only had a basic idea of how to do a high jump. But I competed in that event and somehow won. I still don’t know how I did it.”

Competing in the East Zone U-16 championships in the hexathlon, Piyush won gold again. At the National Inter District competition (NIDJAM) in February 2023, he won another gold in the same event. By now, Piyush’s accomplishments were drawing attention.

“After my gold at the NIDJAM, Raveendran sir’s hand came over me. He has supported me in everything since then.”

The youngster was then sent to Bhopal to train for the decathlon. But while he was seen as a multi-event talent, Piyush’s real aptitude was in learning quickly.

“I would watch and observe and pick up things really fast. I’d never done the pole vault before and I ended up twisting my wrist the first time I tried it in Bhopal.”

By the time he competed at the youth national championships a month later though, he cleared 2.70m and managed to end up winning the U-18 decathlon silver.

Despite winning a silver, he had fallen short of qualification for the youth Asian Games. A new ambition was seeded.

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“When I started, I just wanted to wear the Bihar jersey. But now, I wanted to wear the India jersey.”

At the 2024 Junior Federation Cup in Lucknow, he won another decathlon gold medal but fell short once again in qualifying for the Junior Asian Championships. That was when a coach noticed something. Piyush had run a very quick 400m as part of his combined events, clocking 48.92. Why not try to qualify for the Asian Championships in the 400m?

In only his second competition in the 400m, the Indian U-18 national championships in Bilaspur, Chhatisgarh, Piyush clocked 48.02 seconds to take silver. This too was a excruciating 0.02 seconds off the qualifying mark for the Asian Championships. Rather than get disheartened, though, he found clarity.

“This was going to be the event I specialised in.”

Piyush then moved to Hyderabad in 2023 and began taking online training from former national coach N. Ramesh. He continued to improve. Despite suffering a groin strain that would hamper most of his 2025, he got even faster, running 47.43 to take gold at the Khelo India Games at the start of the year and later clocking 47.73 at the India Open Athletics meet in Patna, finishing fifth in his first senior national meet.

In 2026, Piyush finally achieved his dream of making it to the Indian team. At the India Open 400m competition in Thiruvananthapuram in March, Piyush clocked a personal best of 47.11. A month later at the Junior Federation Cup in Bengaluru, he shaved nearly a half a second off that to improve to 46.62. That earned him a ticket to the Junior Asian Championships in Hong Kong.

By now Piyush had begun to carve out a reputation for himself distinct from what people generally thought of athletes from his state. He’d gone from a scrawny 5 ft. 3 in boy, who tipped the scales at 53kg at his first Bihar state championships to a ripped 5 foot 9 sprinter who was 62kg of mostly muscle.

“When I first competed at a national tournament, people ignored me. They’d see ‘Bihar’ written on the back of my jersey and think. ‘ Bihari hai, kya medal le ke ayega (He’s only a Bihari, what sort of medal will he even win). That motivated me.  Bihar se hu toh kya? Mai bhi dikhata hu (What if I’m from Bihar? I’ll show them). Once they saw that I was winning a medal every time I competed, there was a lot more respect. In Hong Kong, everyone in the team called me Bihari  babu but they were calling me that out of respect. It felt good.”

Respect might have been earned but Piyush would have to push himself to a level he’d never known to get his first international medal.

At first, everything that could have possibly gone wrong seemed to go wrong.

A visa issue had had him sent back from the emigration counter of the New Delhi airport. It took a couple of days for the problem to be solved. He eventually landed in Hong Kong a couple of hours before the start of his first heat in the individual 400m. Running without a warm up, he somehow made it to the semifinals before the lack of recovery saw him crash out with a timing far lower than what he had accomplished in training. A day later, he thought he had won a silver in the 4x400m mixed team relay but was disqualified for a lane infringement.

The 4x400m men’s relay on the final day of the competition was his last chance.

“I had actually fainted in shock after being disqualified in the mixed relay. I wondered then if I even deserved to wear the India jersey.”

When it was time to perform, though, he more than justified his place in history. It’s a moment he says he’s not going to forget for a while. “Somehow, there were a lot of migrants from Bihar in the stadium. They had found out that I was competing for India, and they were cheering for me, shouting ‘ Ek Bihari sau pe bhaari’ (one Bihari is good enough to take on a hundred). That was a very special moment for me.”

It’s unlikely this will be the last time people hear about Piyush. His sub46-second timing in the first leg of the race – meaning he didn’t get a running start – gives an indication of just what he could run very soon.

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“I know I can run below 46 seconds in an individual race this year. I was ready to run a 45.7 or 45.8 race in Hong Kong but I just wasn’t able to recover in time,” he explains. He’ll likely have his chances soon. Following his performance in Bengaluru, Piyush says he’s been told his name has been included in the national camp in Thiruvananthapuram. He’s looking forward to it.

“In Hyderabad, I’m mostly training by myself. There’s no one to really push me. In Trivandrum, (National record holder) Vishal TK is there. There are many athletes who have run in the 45-second range. There is a foreign coach (Jason Dawson) there also. I know I’ll get better,” he says.

When he thinks about where he started, what he’s gone through and where he’s at, Piyush can barely believe himself.

“Sometimes when I look back, it all seems like a fairytale.”

That sentiment doesn’t last for too long, though.

“When I started, I was just happy getting to run. With time, my horizons have widened and my ambitions are very far ahead.  Kabhi piche nahi dekhna hai. Bas aage (I don’t like to look back. Only forward),” he says.

Published on Jun 01, 2026