Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav

Who was Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav?

Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav or KD Jadhav, widely known as 'Pocket Dynamo', was independent India's first individual Olympic medalist when he won the freestyle wrestling bronze medal at the 1952 Helsinki Games. Since 1900 when Norman Pritchard won two silver medals in athletics, India had won gold medals only in field hockey, a team sport. He is the only one among the entire lot of India’s Olympic medalists not to have been conferred with any of the Padma Awards.

For nearly half a century, his would remain the only individual medal for India at the Olympics until Leander Paes won a bronze in 1996. Hailing from a wrestling background, Jadhav was an ardent fan of sports, mainly wrestling, kabaddi, running, swimming and others. His father, a wrestler himself taught Jadhav about the sport and despite being the youngest in the family managed to grasp the game and outclassed everyone. Gradually he began emerging as undisputed wrestler in the area and soon was competing in national events.

Jadhav was fleet footed, which made him different from other wrestlers of his time. English coach Rees Gardner saw this trait in him and trained him prior to 1948 Olympic games.