SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Rajeev Ram is used to the world watching as he earns a place on the Olympic podium, but being in the audience when his hometown's speedway is in the global spotlight on race day is something he's never been able to do.
"That race is always during the French Open, so every since I was basically a late teenager, I was always in Europe playing, and that's just never something I went to," Ram said. "I even went to the French Open as a junior, so just never had the opportunity. But what an amazing place to be and an iconic venue in my home city, it's incredible."
On Wednesday, Ram toured the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with up-and-coming INDY NXT driver Yuven Sundaramoorthy.
"I'm the first ever Indian American to win a race in the IndyCar ladder and also the only one really racing now and trying to be the first one to race in the Indy 500 and in the IndyCar series," Sundaramoorthy said.
Both athletes hope many more will follow.
"The American Indian and the Indian community as a whole has a strong stereotype that stay in their kind of lanes of what they do, and it's important to show that you can be an Olympic medalist tennis player, you can be a race car driver and anywhere in the middle. Whatever you want to do is possible," Sundaramoorthy said.
"I would say, for me, you know, being an Indian American athlete, there's not many of us, you know, it's not the conventional route. So to see somebody, you know, be successful, or on his way to being incredibly successful in a sport that really has no sort of path for that before for people like us, I think it's so cool," Ram said. "He's going to be a trailblazer, and I'm honored to meet him. I'm honored to, like, have him show me around this place. I hope I can do the same for him at a tennis tournament pretty soon."
The track visit was a quick pit stop before Ram leaves for the U.S. Open in New York on Friday.