His name might not have the same lustre or renown now, but for a generation gone by Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav was a star they adored and wanted to emulate. KD Jadhav would go on to become the first Indian to win an Olympic medal. But his journey to the Olympic podium was anything but easy.

Affiliations 1 Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Dadasaheb Balpande College of Pharmacy, Nagpur 440037, India. 2 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia. 3 Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow 226031, India.