THIMPHU, Bhutan — “I think I can take President Obama one on one in basketball,” Bhutan’s newly elected prime minister said recently in an interview. “I’ve got some special moves.”

The prime minister, Tshering Tobgay, is four inches shorter than Mr. Obama, so beating the American president in hoops might be a stretch. But after his surprise election this summer, almost no one in South Asia doubts that he has special moves. And he is renowned for his grit.

Four years ago while competing in the first Tour of the Dragon, billed as the most difficult one-day mountain bike race in the world, he fell and broke his jaw after riding 42 miles. In searing pain, he got up and rode the rest of the race — 124 more miles.

Mr. Tobgay, 48, was one of just two opposition members chosen by voters in Bhutan’s first parliamentary elections, in 2008, and few gave him better than even odds at toppling the governing Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party in the country’s second set of national elections in July.