Run Raviin Run

28-year-old Raviin Kumar guns for a second shot to race at the SEA Games in 2019.

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The balancing act of training to represent the country and building up a career is a crossroad that almost every athlete in Singapore faces, but Raviin is quickly learning to take it in his stride.

Raviin found his start in athletics when he was 12 years old, where his father and uncle would take him along for running sessions at the trails around MacRitchie Reservoir every Sunday. The routine inspired him to take up running seriously as he entered his teenage years.

“I now specialise in the 1500m distance, and have my sights on qualifying for the 2019 SEA Games,” he says. If he gets a place on the team, it would be the second time that he will represent the country, having already done so at the 2015 edition of the games for the same event.

“When I first got interested in running, I would take part in everything I could get into,” he recalls. “From the 100m sprint to full marathons, my early days as a polytechnic student were filled with races and competitions. Looking back now, I think that it was both a way to explore the scene and also a way to manage my enthusiasm for running. We all know that teenagers have plenty of energy, so I used sports as a healthy outlet.”