In a kind gesture, President Ram Nath Kovind gifted a racing bicycle to Riyaz, a schoolboy who dreams of excelling as a cyclist, at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. 17-year-old Riyaz, a student of Sarvodaya Bal Vidhyalaya at Anand Vihar in Delhi, hails from Bihar’s Madhubani district. His family, which includes his parents, two sisters and a brother, live in Madhubani, while Riyaz stays in a rented accommodation in Maharajpur, Ghaziabad. To support his father (who is a cook), the boy in his free time works at an eatery in Ghaziabad as a dishwasher.

In 2017, he won a bronze medal in the Delhi State Cycling Championship and later went on to participate in a school games event in Guwahati, according to the District Magistrate, Ghaziabad, and achieved fourth rank at the national level.

Riyaz has taken professional training from Coach Pramod Sharma, and regularly trains at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Delhi. Keeping his passion alive and his dreams closer, he spends time on practicing after studies and work. Riyaz had to depend on a borrowed sports cycle for his practice, and all that the budding champion wanted was a cycle of his own. This wish was finally granted on the occasion of Eid by the country’s President. “In a gesture of motivating youth for nation-building, President of India, Ram Nath Kovind chose a struggling school boy Riyaz, who dreams of excelling as a cyclist, to give him a racing bicycle,” said a statement released by the president’s office.