Runa Mukherjee Parikh (Ahmedabad)

With high hopes of winning an Olympic medal in Los Angeles four years from now, Ahmedabad-based South Asian and national triathlon champion Pragnya Mohan (30) has also set her heart and mind on the success of her social project “Ek beti, Ek cycle” (one daughter, one cycle).

After being selected a Young Leader under the Lausanne (Switzerland)-based International Olympics Committee’s Young Leaders Programme (YLP) in March 2023, Pragnya launched her Ek beti, Ek cycle initiative. Under YLP, each leader is provided seed-funding of Swiss Francs 10,000 (Rs.9.5 lakh) to plan and run a sustainable sports-based social project.

“My project appeals to the public to surrender old unused bicycles. We refurbish and donate them to girls from underprivileged households to enable continuation of their education. A bicycle can empower them, especially girls whose schools are over 5 km from their residences. It reduces dropouts dramatically,” says Pragnya.

A natural athlete who became interested in competitive sports from early age, Pragnya won her first National triathlon — an endurance multisport race comprising swimming, cycling, and running over varying distances — championship in 2014. That very year, she represented India in the South Asian Championship at Pokhara (Nepal) winning a silver.

After completing her Chartered Accountancy (CA) degree programme in 2017, Pragnya invested a full year in highly competitive triathlon training in Spain and Australia. The results showed in 2019 when she was crowned South Asia Champion and earned the distinction of being the first triathlete to represent India at the Triathlon World Cup in Madrid (Spain) the same year.

Post-Covid, Pragnya defended her South Asia Championship title in 2022. But while mastering these three endurance sports, she also suffered severe injuries which deprived her of the opportunity of qualifying for bigger tournaments like the Olympics.

In her new avatar as TEDx speaker and girls education champion, Pragnya addressed delegates at the recent COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference staged in Baku (Azerbaijan, November 11-22) where she called for individual and collective efforts to fight climate change.

“I don’t own a car, I use a bicycle,” says this sports evangelist with bigger issues on her mind.