Name: Leslie Claudius
Discipline: Indian field hockey player
State: Madhya Pradesh
Date of Birth: March 25, 1927
Achievements:
- Figured in the Guinness Book of World Records for maximum number of Olympic medals in hockey (3 gold and 1 silver).
Padma Shri in 1971.
- In the year 1959, Leslie Claudius was declared the Captain of the Indian Hockey team.
Profile :
He was born at Bilaspur, Madhya Pradesh in a family with nine children. Initially he started with game of football. He was an accomplished football player and was also a part of the Bengal Nagpur Railway (BNR) team as a left-half in the Indian Football Association Shield Tournament. Leslie was inducted into the BNR team. The team managed to finish second at the Beighton Cup and Leslie found the game of hockey exciting enough to leave football.
Claudius played for Port Commissioner’s team as a center half in the Aga Khan tournament held at Bombay (now Mumbai) in the year 1948. He delivered a wonderful performance and caught the eye of the nation. Still, he did so good at the trials that he was selected for the event at the age of 21. It was just two years that he had begun playing hockey. He got to play in only one match at the London Olympics, which gave India its first gold medal as an independent nation.
Leslie was a part of the Indian Olympic squad that made a hat-trick of gold medals at London, Helsinki and Melbourne Olympics. His skills as a strong mid fielder got him worldwide recognition and fame.
In the year 1959, Leslie Claudius was declared the Captain of the Indian Hockey team, while Dhyan Chand was the Coach of the team. He led the team to a Europe tour where the team played 19 matches, won 15 out of them, drew 3 and lost just 1 match. At the Rome Olympics 1960, Leslie wanted to become the first hockey player to have been a part of the team winning four hockey gold medals in a row. Till then, India had a wonderful record of 30 consecutive victories in Olympics since the year 1928. Claudius ended his International career after the Rome Olympics, and represented Bengal and Calcutta Customs in the domestic Hockey for next five years.
He served the Indian hockey team as a team manager for Asian Games 1974 and 1978, and also remained the member of the selection panel of the Hockey Federation for some time.
