At a young age growing up in Bangalore,
Karnataka, Robin, had the opportunity to enter the world of sports and began to
find success. He represented India at the 100, 200 metres and relay. At that
time, he was coached by the famous coach Lingappa who still coaches today at
the age of 90.
After years of peak performance, he went
through a rough patch which brought a lot of disappointments. The down-side to
being embedded in sports is losing. This made him search for purpose. He became
a follower of Jesus during that phase of his life and began to find meaning.
As a runner, he was able to stand against the
challenge to get short term results by unethical means because of his faith in
Christ. He was training for the 1978 Asian games in Bangalore. In those days
Kanturva stadium had a cinder track. In the national camp the team will be
selected to participate in 4 X 100 relay for the national team if the
qualifying time of 40.5 seconds was achieved. The rain disrupted practice
before the race. At that time, the team discussed, what they had done the
previous year. In the 4 X 100 metres relay, you have to stay in your tracks. If
the third runner cuts into the first lane he cuts the distance and time. Being
the third runner they wanted Robin to cut tracks, to which he refused. The two
judges who were also from Karnataka, came to him saying “Robin, you are from
Karnataka, do what you want and we will not disqualify you”. But, Robin refused
to cut tracks and the team did not qualify. He was disappointed but was glad
that he was able to stand for the right thing.
He became a Chaplain at several sporting
events like the Asian Games in Seoul, the Seoul Olympics, World Athletics
Championships in 1993, 1995 and 1997 and finally the Sydney Olympics 2000. He had
the opportunity to travel around the world rubbing shoulders with sports stars
like Carl Lewis, Madeline Mims and Jonathan Edwards.
During one of his visits to the US, he had the opportunity to attend a
conference by the Association of Experiential Education, which opened his eyes
to the world of experiential education. This led to the formation of
Breakthrough, a project of the trust, Sports Outreach India in 2000.
Today, as the CEO and Founder of Breakthrough, Robin impacts
organizations in India and different parts of the globe through experiential
learning. He has facilitated Outbound training programs for CEOs and top
management in a number of multi-national companies. Under his leadership and
guidance Breakthrough has grown to have three campus in South India, two of
which are partnered centres. We hope to grow across India and Srilanka in the
coming years impacting lives through experiential learning. Srilanka is the
next focus for Breakthrough with the ground work that has
already begun for the upcoming centre.
