He cannot walk or speak — but Saravanan is still racing

2026-03-28 - 12:11

Love, letter by letter — M Sassikala stands by G Saravanan as he spells out words on an alphabet chart resting below him. (Noorul Ariffin pic) PETALING JAYA: I was not prepared for the silence. When former national athletes welfare foundation (Yakeb) chairman Noorul Ariffin called me on my phone last week and gently turned the screen towards G Saravanan, the man who once filled any room with easy laughter could not speak. The race walking legend lay on his bed in Bukit Mertajam, his body stilled by disease, a tube at his neck helping him breathe. And yet, when he saw me, he smiled. It was unmistakably his: warm, knowing, almost mischievous. The kind of smile that used to come at the end of a race, when he had pushed his body to its limits and still found something left to give. Only this time, the race is different. G Saravanan, 56, Malaysia’s only Commonwealth Games athletics gold medallist, no longer walks, talks or eats on his own. Motor neuron disease (MND) has gradually stripped that from him since his diagnosis in 2021. G Saravanan celebrates gold at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games with the woman who still stands beside him in his toughest race. (G Saravanan pic) In 2020, he weighed 79kg. Today, he is down to about 40kg. His frame is frail, almost fragile, but his presence is not diminished. His eyes follow every word. He nods, gently, deliberately. He listens the way fighters do — fully, stubbornly, as if refusing to be left behind. For three minutes, I spoke. For three minutes, he answered without a voice. And in that quiet exchange, something inside me gave way. Not because I saw a man defeated, but because I realised he is still fighting in the only way he can. Beside him, his wife M Sassikala stood steady, calm, attentive, quietly strong. She has become his voice, his hands, his everything, caring for him while raising their three children and holding together a life that has been turned inside out. When Saravanan wants to speak, he spells it out, letter by letter, pointing to an alphabet chart. It is slow and painstaking. But it is still communication. It is still him. He is fed through a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube, a feeding line inserted directly into the stomach through the abdominal wall, because even swallowing has become a struggle. Recently, he spent 20 days in intensive care in Penang. At one point, he stopped breathing for two minutes before doctors revived him. Sassikala tells this without drama. Just fact. Just strength. She says he is still a fighter. You believe her. A year ago, when I first wrote about his condition, Malaysians responded with remarkable generosity, raising more than RM100,000. Even Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim contributed. Today, Sassikala insists they are not asking for more. “People have already given, and that generosity has helped sustain his care, which costs about RM2,000 a month, with Yakeb reimbursing the expenses,” she said. Perhaps because Saravanan himself never wanted sympathy. “While I appreciate the empathy people feel for me, I absolutely hate sympathy. I want to be as normal as possible,” he once told me. Normal, for Saravanan, was never ordinary. In his prime, he walked over 5,000km a year. Some days, he covered 55km in training. There was little sports science then, no real understanding of nutrition or recovery, no psychological support. They trained through pain and recovered as best they could. He kept going. That same relentless will carried him through 50km of searing heat at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games, where he walked into history. He is still going. The race has only changed . The body has slowed. The voice has gone. But the fight, that stubborn, unyielding fight remains. As my call ended, he looked at me and smiled again. And for a moment, it felt like the race was not over.