“Sometimes I Wanted to Stop”

Ask people what they remember about champions and they will usually mention trophies. Ask Aditya what he remembers, and he remembers training.

A lot of training.

His preparation began roughly one month before the championship. The sessions were demanding, repetitive and, in his own words, “really gruelling.” There were moments when he felt discouraged and wondered whether he wanted to continue.

“There were times I felt like I didn’t want to keep going anymore,” he says.

What kept him moving was an image he had created in his mind. He pictured himself lifting the trophy. Whenever exhaustion began to overpower motivation, he returned to that picture.

“I kept thinking about myself lifting the trophy,” he recalls. “So I told myself, ‘Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.’”

That image became stronger than the fatigue. Long before he lifted the trophy in Cape Town, he had already won the first battle: the battle against the temptation to quit.