Bengaluru is gearing up to host the the Tata Consultancy Services World 10K Bengaluru 2026. It is a yearly 10 km street run held in the Garden City. The race was first held in 2008 and is now heading into its sixteenth edition. This year the race will be held on April 26 and over 36,000 runners have enrolled themselves across different categories of the race.
The race has been previously graced by champion athletes like three-time world half marathon champion Geoffrey Kamworor of Kenya, 10,000m and 5,000m World record holder Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda and Tokyo Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya.
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The race has also attracted global sporting legends as International Event Ambassadors, including Carl Lewis, Mike Powell, Marie-José Pérec, Maria Mutola, Stephanie Rice, Arantxa Sánchez, Valerie Adams, Dalilah Muhammad and Justin Gatlin.
This year double Olympic medallist and two-time World Champion Blanka Vlašić of Croatia has been announced as the Event Ambassador of the marquee event.
Ahead of the weekend's race, Prakhar Sachdeo for NDTV Profit caught up with Vlašić for an interview. In the interview the 42-year-old high-jumper spoke everything from her struggles in her career, to importance of running to what makes Croatia a top sporting country. Excerpts of the interview are below:
Q: What excites you as being the International Event Ambassadors for TCS World 10K?
Blanka Vlašić: The exciting part is just that I could be a part of this huge event, one of the most popular and the biggest 10K race in the world that's been held in India, which is where I've never been. It's my first time here, so that's exciting. And I'm excited to witness this kind of race that has been organized in such a great way.
I just love running. I love running and I started to run myself, so I'm very excited to learn more about running I just by being present in these races.
Q: How do running events like these shape the sporting culture of of a country?
Blanka Vlašić: These massive races bring awareness about the importance of just being active, moving your body. I mean, they're all inclusive. You have participants that are pro athletes and then people who just started to run. So, everybody can participate. It makes sports and physical activity more popular among young kids.
Then they become motivated to start to do something. They motivate people to change their habits, maybe start healthier living, eating, making good decisions daily. So, I think it affects the mindset of people a lot.
Q: How running helped you?
Blanka Vlašić: The simple thing about running is that you just need a running shoes and you step out of your door and you start running. So, it is simple and I'm very attracted by that simpleness.
You don't need any facilities, you just run. You can run anywhere, which is great. But the powerful is because so many things can happen during the run.
You're thinking about your pace, sure, you're thinking about your rhythm, yes, but you can also be with yourself, with your thoughts. It can be really, for me at least, it is a very relaxing and therapeutic process. Sure, my body gets tired, but in a good way.
But also after finishing running, my head is more clear, my thoughts are in its place and I feel like I've done something great for myself, not just physically, but also mentally.
Q: Around 9,000 women are expected to participate in the run? Any message for them?
Blanka Vlašić: I would just encourage them to continue and to try to find a passion in their physical activities because, as I said, it's such an important part of our everyday life and physical activities. I mean, being healthy, being fit, being mentally clear just makes us so much more productive in our everyday life. And it should bring joy.
So in a way, it complements life in such a nice way, it gives it an extra flavor. So I would definitely encourage everybody, especially women, to find a time in their week to be physically active, to set a goal and to just try to achieve it.
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Q: What were some of your biggest challengers during your athletic career?
Blanka Vlašić: I would say that health problems and injury problems were one of my hardest obstacles. You know, I had thyroid problems, then I had two Achilles surgery, surgeries which were very difficult to recover from. So yeah, I had one great comeback after my first injury and I've learned definitely a lot about myself, about the resilience and about importance to just never give up because we fall but we are not meant to stay on the ground.
We need to get up, we need to use the momentum of defeat in a way that, you know, we learn from our mistakes and we just try to get up and just continue the journey. Eventually, my injuries made me, I mean, just forced me to retire. So from second injury, I never did a comeback but either way, I mean, going through hard days, times always made me question, ask questions that I never usually would.
So in a ways, from hardships and from struggles, I always learned so much more than from victories, you know, because struggles made me question myself and made me want to become better. So we shouldn't be afraid of those, we shouldn't be afraid of hardships.
Q: In my observation, Croatia achieves a lot of success in sports despite being a very small nation and a country that has a fraction of a population compared to that of India, so what makes Croatia such a successful sporting nation?
Blanka Vlašić: This is a very complicated question to answer but I will only say that we have a highly talented pool of athletes.
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