Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Hima Das wins World-Level gold' that was published in Newsband

Hima Das wins World-Level gold

That it takes years to master the quartermile, Hima Das has proved this wrong. The 18-year-old from Assam has produced one stunning performance after another. Her World Under-20 championships gold at Tampere in Finland on Thursday night is the best so far. Hima’s under-20 title was the country’s first-ever gold in a track event at any IAAF World event.

It is in Hima’s strong run that the country has had a breakthrough in a track event. A farmer’s daughter from Assam’s Nagaon district, Das was a 100 m and 200 m sprinter earlier. Her performance graph in the 400 m this year is breathtaking. From 53.21 seconds (in her debut race in March), she has brought down her personal best to 51.13 s in just four months. Will she be able to break the national record — Manjit Kaur’s 51.05 s — in next month’s Asian Games at Jakarta?

It usually takes years of training to produce the kind of timing that Das is clocking now. In Indian athletics, improvement is a big struggle and our athletes’ choice of locations for foreign training trips have often raised questions. Will Das’s achievement stand the test of time?

Kudos to Homa Das who has made the whole nation feel proud. The sprouted talent needs to be nurtured with all care and attention. While the congratulatory tweet from PM and our President was a deserved pat on the athlete, that of AFI was in bad taste. The AFI's remarks about Hima's poor English, lays bare its arm chair attitude, which may cause bias in its approach towards the athletes with lesser command over English.

In her young days, Das started off by playing football with boys in her school days, on the mud pits near her village school. She was considering a career in football and was hoping to play for India. Later, it was suggested to her that she should participate in athletics. Das met Nipon Das (an athletics coach with a Directorate of Sports and Youth Welfare) during an inter-district meet and he soon began coaching her. Her coach asked her to shift to Guwahati, 140 km from her village, to make a career in athletics. Das' parents were initially reluctant but were eventually convinced by him. Her coach arranged for Das to stay in a rented accommodation near the Sarusajai Sports Complex. He inducted her into the state academy, which specialised in boxing and football. A separate wing was started later for athletics.

Das is now part of a group of Indian athletes who have won medals at the World U20 Championships, which includes Seema Punia (Bronze, Discus throw), Navjeet Kaur Dhillon (Bronze, Discus throw) and Neeraj Chopra (Gold, Javelin throw).