Sania bats big for sportswomen

Doha, Oct. 3: Dina AsherSmith ended Britain’s 36year wait for a short sprint title at the World Championships on Wednesday as Grant Holloway of the United States stormed to victory in the 110 metres hurdles.

Asher-Smith, the silver medallist in the 100m, dominated a 200m field depleted by injuries and withdrawals to claim gold in 21.88 seconds at the Khalifa Stadium.

The 23-year-old becomes the first British woman in World Championship history to win either a 100m or 200m gold. “I don’t know what to say, I don’t think it’s properly sunk in,” AsherSmith told the BBC.

“I woke up today thinking ‘this is it. This is the moment you did all your work for’. The tiredness disappeared. I’m lost for words. I dreamt of this and now it’s real,” she said.

Brittany Brown of the United States took silver in 22.22sec and Mujinga Kambundji of Switzerland was third in 22.51sec.

A dramatic 110m hurdles final meanwhile saw the world leader Holloway clinch victory in 13.10sec after leading from start to finish.

Olympic and reigning world champion Omar McLeod looked to be closing on Holloway in the final stages, but crashed heavily at the final barrier.

Sergey Shubenkov, world champion in 2015, took silver in 13.15sec whilst Frenchman Pascal Martinot-Lagarde finished third in 13.18sec. Asher-Smith and Holloway’s wins were the only two gold medals decided on Wednesday.

The other gold came in the men’s hammer throw, where Pawel Fajdek of Poland successfully defended his 2017 crown after the track on launching his fourth throw to 80.50m.

That was over two metres better than silver medallist Quentin Bigot of France, who finished second with 78.19m. Bence Halasz of Hungary was third with 78.18m. MAYER TRAILING Meanwhile, the opening rounds of the decathlon saw France’s reigning world champion and world record holder Kevin Mayer battling Canadians Damian Warner and Pierce LePage in the multi-discipline event. Mayer opened the defence of his title with a personal best in the 100m, clocking 10.50sec to grab 975 points. The Frenchman followed it with a season’s best leap in the long jump before erupting in celebration after launching a throw of 16.82m in the shot put.

After five events, however, Warner is in the gold medal position with 4,513 points, with LePage just behind on 4,486pts.

Mayer remains firmly in contention with 4,483pts heading into Thursday.

In the heptathlon, Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson is locked in a thrilling duel with Belgium’s reigning Olympic and world champion Nafissatou Thiam. Johnson-Thompson recorded personal bests in the shot put and 100m hurdles as well as a season’s best of 23.08sec in the 200m to finish the day on 4,138 points. With the final three of seven disciplines remaining, JohnsonThompson leads Thiam by 96 points. New Delhi, Oct. 3: A trailblazer in Indian tennis, Sania Mirza on Thursday revealed that as a child, she was once asked to stop playing as “no one would marry” her if her complexion turned “dark” due to the rigours of an outdoor sport.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum here, Sania, who has three doubles and an equal number of mixed doubles Grand Slams to her credit, reflected on the challenges she faced during a panel discussion on women and leadership.

Sania remains India’s most successful woman tennis player, rising to a career-high world No. 27 in mid-2007 in the WTA singles chart.

“To start with, parents, neighbours, aunties and the uncles (need to) stop telling you how dark you will become and no one will marry you if you play a sport. I was just eight (when this came up) and everybody thought nobody is going to marry me because I would get dark. I thought to myself I am just a kid, I’ll be fine,” said the 32-yearold.

“It is so deeply embedded, this culture about how a girl needs to be pretty and by that also one means fair, I don’t know why. This culture

I was just eight and everybody thought nobody is going to marry me because I would get dark (due to the rigours of an outdoor sport). I thought to myself I am just a kid, I’ll be fine.

has to change,” added the Hyderabadi, who also has 41 WTA doubles titles to her credit and was the world No.1 in women’s doubles in 2015.

Married to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik, Sania is currently working towards a comeback to the professional circuit next year after taking a break to become a mother.

Reflecting on her journey, Sania said she had just sprint legend P. T. Usha to look up to in her growing up years but the times have evolved for the better and several women athletes are becoming role models for the current crop of aspiring athletes.

“I feel proud that I had, may be, a little part to play in women taking up sport. The only sportswoman I could look up to was P.T. Usha and she was a couple of generations before me. Today we can name P.V. Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Dipa Karmakar, so many of them,” she said.

“We still have some way to go...I still don’t think there are equal opportunities. But we have superstars now and they are the biggest in sports outside cricket. Imagine what will happen they actually get equal opportunities,” she asserted.

Elaborating her take on the general attitude towards professionally successful women, Sania cited a recent interaction to assert that women are still judged for how good a homemaker they are.

“I was at the Mumbai airport, a gentleman came and told me that ‘motherhood is suiting you’. He took a picture and asked me where my son was, I told him he is in Hyderabad. His next sentence was ‘you should be with him’.

“I told him ‘where is your child?’ He said ‘at home’. I told him ‘well you should be with him too’. He didn’t think that there was anything insulting to ask me that,” she recalled.

SANIA MIRZA,