Srinivas Gowda, from Moodabidri in Karnataka’s coastal district of Dakshina Kannada has shot to fame overnight after he became the fastest runner in the history of the traditional sport of Karnataka, breaking a 30-year-old record.
Gowda, a construction worker is being compared to the Olympic gold medallist sprinter Usain Bolt after he achieved a record-breaking win in a buffalo race.
Srinivas Gowda, 28, was competing in Kambala, a sport from the southern state of Karnataka where people sprint 142m through paddy fields with buffalo.
Mr Gowda is said to have finished in 13.42 seconds. Bolt holds the world 100m record of 9.58 seconds.
But the governing body for Kambala has warned against comparing him to Bolt.
“We would not like to indulge in any comparison with others,” Prof K Gunapala Kadamba, president of the Kambala Academy, told BBC Hindi.
“They [Olympic event monitors] have more scientific methods and better electronic equipment to measure speed.”
Prof Kadamba’s response came after several local newspapers and journalists made the comparison between Mr Gowda’s performance and the Jamaican sprinter’s world record time.
