IT’S almost three in the afternoon and the usually busy suburb of Sungei Long sounds like it’s momentarily in sweet slumber. The breeze sweeping through the township offers a slight relief from the blazing sun where Datuk M. Rajamani stands in front of her house. “It’s very warm isn’t it?” she remarks with a wide smile before ushering me in to her home.
The former national athlete, dubbed the Queen of Tracks, has no issues with the heat — for years, before air-conditioned gyms became a norm and proper running tracks were available for our sprinters, Rajamani trained in sweltering temperatures just about everywhere, from running up steep tin-mining roads to carrying weights under coconut trees.
Despite not having any training facilities or money to buy proper running shoes or clothes, the two-time National Sportswoman of the Year became a seven-time Seap Games gold medallist, an Asian Games gold medallist and Malaysia’s first female Olympian.
It comes as no surprise that PR firm Xavier Mah decided to honour Rajamani in the outfit’s recent “beaXsuperwoman” event dedicated to women whose inspiring stories empower Malaysians to make positive impacts in their communities.
RUNNING FOR GLORY
“It may sound selfish, but I believe I paved the way for others in a time when there was so much discrimination,” she remarks in reference to contemporary Malaysian athletes. “These days, if you have a problem with the top officials, you can go straight to them and talk it out. In our days, it wasn’t like that.”
The days Rajamani speaks of are the 1960s — a time when athletes had little to no rights and when sports were more of an all-boys club. The participation of female athletes were a rarity, what more a young girl of Ceylonese stock?
“Coming from a Ceylonese background, people in the community would make snide remarks about me running around in shorts. All I was doing was train but people would tell my father: ‘What is your daughter doing running around town in her shorts?’” she recalls.
However, reveals Rajamani, her father V. Mailvaganam was not only her main motivator, greatest teacher and her biggest fan — he was also her rock. “My father had so much confidence in me. He told them: ‘I know what my daughter is doing.’”
LESSONS IN LIFE
Those who knew Rajamani during her golden years as Malaysia’s pride understood the magnitude of her father’s role in her success. In fact, in every interview she has had over the last 40 years there hasn’t been a single time when Rajamani hasn’t acknowledged her beloved father, a man she describes as kind, giving, honest and principled. “My father taught me that it is never about winning. It’s about doing your best and finishing the race. He always told me nothing is impossible.”
For V. Mailvaganam, the phrase reflected the way he had lived his own life — with his pay as a storekeeper with JKR, he raised eight children, and lived through the death of his eldest boy and youngest girl. When Rajamani was barely 6, his wife passed on. “Many relatives suggested my father to re-marry, but he refused to allow anyone to get between him and his children,” she shares.
Rajamani’s siblings were not the only children her father and late mother cared for. During the Japanese Occupation, they housed and fed scores of children who were left parentless by the war. “My mother would cook for 20 to 40 children every day, and my father, he was the kind of person who would share his last grain of rice without hesitation. In that household, we grew up with so many different children and learnt the importance of sharing,” she says of her childhood in Tapah, Perak where her father was based.
DADDY DEAREST
Rajamani’s athletic career took off as a young adult. Ironically, it was her excessive sleeping that prompted her father to make a major decision. “Oh I loved sleeping! As soon as I came home from school, I would snooze for hours,” she unabashedly admits, breaking out in laughter.
When her father saw this, he sought the help of local coach R. Suppiah to whip his sleeping beauty into shape. “My father told him he doesn’t want to catch me sleeping in the house in the evening so I went for training instead,” she explains, adding that sometimes she would have to walk miles for her sessions.
Rajamani recalls her first pair of running shoes with great fondness and unmistakable sentimentality. “I was 13, and my father took me to this cobbler to make shoes with spikes,” she gushes with pride. She lets out another roar of laughter thinking of the simple black rubber shoes which she used over a period of seven years — the same pair which made it through so many competitions, including the qualifying rounds for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.
Today, athletes are crowned with celebrity statuses, incentives and money. For the sportsmen and women of the 1960s, the only incentive was hearing the national anthem being played. “We couldn’t afford anything, so we had to make our shoes ourselves. And every few months, we would have to fix the spikes and the rubber again,” she notes, smiling and shrugging her broad shoulders.
JOLT OF REAL LIFE
Rajamani was at the height of her career at age 24, when the unthinkable happened. On March 23, 1968, tragedy struck. While training for the Mexican Olympics, lightning struck her and a few other Malaysian athletes. It’s largely assumed that the incident, which left her unconscious for 18 hours, was what ended her career, but as she reveals, lightning had little to do with it.
“It was the kind of attitude which followed that made me hang up my spikes,” she informs, her tone shifting to one of anguish and deep sorrow. “They didn’t care about their athletes. If they didn’t like your coach, they would make life difficult for you.”
Mummy Long Legs, as she was known to many, was up for her third National Sportswoman of the year award. “I was told that since I had already won the award twice, a new face should win it this time,” Rajamani confides. The 1968 award was eventually awarded to national basketball player Annie Goh Koon Gee.
Hanging up her spikes, as she shares, was one of the most heart-breaking moments she has experienced. Even after decades, the wound still stings. “Whenever I see a field, I still dream of putting my spikes back on,” Rajamani mutters, trying hard to muster at least a smirk.
She pulls out two boxes as we speak, rummaging through some old photographs and newspaper cuttings of glory days gone by. “My father started smoking cigars at age 10. You know... Sri Lanka,” she says, her eyes dancing with the same glee every time she talks about her old man (he succumbed to throat cancer 22 years ago).
“Until today, I still think about everything my father said to me, and continue to live by the standards he set. I also follow the discipline practised by Mrs Nadarajah, who volunteered to be the mother I never had the chance of knowing,” she says of her former headmistress, another instrumental person in her life.
“If not for them, I wouldn’t have achieved what I did,” she says in a pensive manner. “I’ve seen a lot of potential but I also see parents who are not supportive of their child’s athletic ambitions. It’s a real waste,” she remarks bluntly. “I always share my father’s advice with our national athletes. If I could make it then with so little, imagine what they can achieve now!” she swings a rhetoric.
Maybe we will see another golden wave of Malaysian sports. Maybe sports councils will appreciate and reward our former athletes as they rightfully deserve, and just maybe, M. Rajamani might pick up those spikes again. As her father once said, nothing is impossible.