When Dilip Gavit produced the last dash to win gold in the men’s 100m T47, a burst over the final 30 metres to cross in 10.71 seconds, his childhood coach Vaijnath Kale, watching from the stands, remembered the years of struggle behind it. Coach and athlete embraced; emotions took over.Two months before the Commonwealth Games, Gavit was not even certain he would compete in Glasgow. His actual event, the 400m T47, was not on the programme. At the insistence of a Paralympic Committee of India official, he switched to the 100m, a distance he had barely raced. Wednesday’s run, on a rain-soaked track in Lane 7, was his first major race over it.“Today is Guru Purnima and there is no better gift than this gold medal. But whatever I do, it won’t even get close to what Kale sir has done for me,” Gavit said. Kale told The Indian Express from Glasgow, more simply, “When dreams come true, such emotions come out. The medal is a testament that a boy from a non-descript village of Nashik can dream and then achieve that dream.”Five years earlier, an 18-year-old Gavit had said of his coach, “If he asks me to leave running and try jumping, I will do it without asking a question.” He was not speaking about the 100m. But he might as well have been. Coach Vaijnath Kale with Dilip Gavit. (Special Arrangement)It was also a redemption. The 400m T47 was the event he had built his career around, an Asian Para Games gold in 2022, a Paralympic final in Paris in 2024, where he finished last, eighth of eight, in 49.99 seconds. Glasgow came in a discipline he had never seriously run. He became the first Indian to win a Commonwealth Games gold in a para athletics track event, and only the second Indian ever to win one in para athletics, after Sharmila Dhankar’s shot put gold days earlier in the same city.A new lifeGavit was born to a farming tribal family in Toran Dongri, near Nashik, one of six children the household was struggling to feed. He lost his right arm at around four or five, accounts he has given have varied slightly, after falling from a mango tree. “My parents took me to an ayurvedic practitioner instead of a proper hospital,” he has said. “They just applied some medication and bandaged my arm.” The wound turned septic before proper treatment came. “If my parents had gone to a proper doctor in the first place, they could have saved my arm.”Also Read | Para Athletics: Dilip Gavit, Basil ensure top two podium finish for IndiaThe amputation made him, in the family’s own reckoning, one more mouth they could not afford. Kale spotted the 11-year-old at a school meet. “I saw the talent and then his conditions,” Kale said. “I decided to adopt him. His family said that they have nothing to give but I convinced them to send Dilip with me.” It took him more than a month. The family agreed only once he promised to cover whatever the boy would need.Story continues below this adGavit moved into Kale’s home. “My sir has two children and now I am like the eldest son,” he has said. “Coach sir is everything to me. I trust him blindly.” Coach Vaijnath Kale with Dilip Gavit. (Special Arrangement)Navigating the lowsKale was a technical official for the Maharashtra Olympic Association, running his own small academy on the side, when he took Gavit in. “I was struggling myself but I thought that I have enough to survive while this guy has nothing. Let me help him,” he said.During and after the pandemic, Kale sold his land to fund Gavit’s foreign trips. “Whatever problems came, we navigated it together like a father and son would,” he said. “I sold my land but I don’t have any regrets.”Asked if he had imagined Gavit would come this far, Kale said, “All I wanted was a good life for this kid because he had the talent and seeing his family conditions broke my heart. But I had never thought that one decision would take us so far.”A dream finish for India!Dilip Mahadu Gavit blazes to a Games Record of 10.71s to win gold, while Mohammed Basil Morssinganakath claims silver in 10.83s, completing a sensational Indian 1-2 in the Men’s 100m Para T47. Watch the Commonwealth Games Glasgow 2026 LIVE &… pic.twitter.com/CjXSFdqb15— Sony Sports Network (@SonySportsNetwk) July 29, 2026The 2022 Asian Para Games gold was proof the sacrifice had meant something. “That one medal showed that our hard work hasn’t gone to waste,” Kale said. “It just fuelled us up for more and more glory.”Story continues below this ad“These medals are the result of that moment,” Gavit says of the day Kale took him in. “For me, he is my father, mother and everything.”He has one target left. “I have won the Asian Games, now I have CWG gold. Now, I want to win a Paralympics medal.” Kale says he simply wants to cherish the moment with the boy he calls his son.Basil shinesBehind Gavit at the finish was Mohammed Basil Morssinganakath, of Malappuram, Kerala, born without a right hand, who took silver in 10.83 seconds. It was Basil, not Gavit, who had won their head-to-head at the Commonwealth Games trials, clocking 10.64 seconds to Gavit’s slower time. “I have seen Basil since his younger days,” Para-Athletics head coach Satyanarayan said. “He joined SAI Trivandrum as a kid and has been constantly progressing since then.” Trials are not Games. On Wednesday, in a final that had nothing to do with what either of them had done before it, India finished one and two.