‘Pull me down, I will come back stronger’. Perhaps, this tweet by sprinter Dutee Chand, after winning the gold .
“This is truly special given the backdrop I entered this event. And more so because it gives me the tag of ‘World’ which is so important and invaluable for any athlete,” Dutee told The Hindu from Napoli. “Honestly, I was expecting a third or a fourth place in my second appearance in these Games. But, when I qualified for the final, I decided to give it all and it was a very close race separating me and the silver medallist,” she said.
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Was there pressure before the final? “Not at all, for I knew that the University people would not say anything even if I didn’t win any any medal,” the 23-year-old athlete said.
“But, the desire to come up with something special was there certainly as I am preparing for the Doha World championship later this year,” says Dutee, who won two silvers in 100m and 200m in the Asiads last year.
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“The focus will be on 100m for sure even as I dedicate this medal to the Achyuta Samanta sir (founder of Kalinga Institute of Technology, Odisha) for all their support,” she said.
Dutee’s coach-cum-mentor Nagapuri Ramesh of SAI says the gold is the result of lot of efforts at Gachibowli Stadium and thanks the initiative of the Gopi Academy-Mytrah Foundation.
“In sprints, a champion is one who knows when to accelerate and when to relax without reducing the speed. She is really good off the blocks. This is the reason why I made her go through the drills of speeding up to 30m and then relax for 20m with cones on the track and this seemed to have worked really well,” Ramesh said.