JUMPING HURDLES, AIMING HIGHER
Swapna Barman, 21, is the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls.
She lives in Patkata, about 7 km from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal. Her father Panchanan suffered a stroke in 2009 and couldn’t work. Mother Basana worked in a tea garden. Neither works now as Swapna doesn’t let them.
Born with six toes on each foot, Barman struggled to wear normal athletics shoes. Yet she competed in high jump and won an all-india schools’ competition in Ludhiana in 2011.
Barman joined the Centre of Excellence at the Sports Authority of India’s eastern centre in Kolkata on May 21, 2012. On the advice of coach Subash Sarkar, she switched from high jump to heptathlon in 2013 even though she was breaking junior national records.
In 2013, she won three golds at an Asian schools’ championship. She also became India’s junior heptathlon champion and holder of the junior national high jump record.
At 17, Barman was the youngest in the field of 12 at the 2014 Asian Games. With just one year’s training, she finished fifth with 5178 points. In the same year, Barman came in second in the Asian U20 heptathlon.
In 2015, Barman won a high jump bronze at the South Asian Federation Games. She also won the heptathlon gold and a silver in the high jump at the senior national championships in Kolkata.
In 2015, Barman was chosen by the Rahul Dravid Mentorship Programme of the Gosports Foundation. The foundation supports Barman through a scholarship.
In 2017, after losing the better part of two years to injury, Barman won the heptathlon gold in the Asian Track and Field Championships in Bhubaneswar, with 5942 points. It helped her qualify for the World Championships where, troubled by a back injury, she finished 26th.
On August 29, Barman became the first Indian to win a heptathlon gold at the Asian Games, when she finished with 6026 points. Barman is also part of the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, an initiative of the union sports ministry that supports athletes with medal potential in the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games.