A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is at stake
When her training camp in Sonepat shut down on April 19 in the wake of India’s Covid-19 surge, Paralympian archer Pooja Khanna had to return home to Rohtak. “In the camp I was safe. Here, every contact is a risk to my Olympic dream,” the 30-year-old said on the phone.
The daughter of a scrap dealer, Khanna knows adversity. She has faced the challenge of being born a girl in a state with India’s worst sex ratio, being struck by polio at the age of two, exclusion as a Dalit even on the sports field, and poverty. Growing up, the sliver of hope came from watching women athletes on TV. “When I saw archer Deepika Kumari, I thought, ‘I can do that’.”
“Shaadi karo, roti banao (get married, make rotis),” her father scoffed. But her mother was her secret ally. “She told me, ‘Go see the world. Don’t end up like me in the kitchen’.”
In her first national competition in 2015, Khanna brought home a gold. In 2016 at Rio, she was India’s first archer to qualify for a Paralympics. Although she returned without a medal, she knew there would be another chance.
With 86 days for the Olympics; 116 for Paralympics, time is running out. As cases mount at home and a new variant infects the world, there is ambiguity around the Games themselves: Will Indians be allowed to travel? Can athletes be accompanied by support teams? Would they require longer quarantines? How will they train under quarantine?
There are no answers, but in Patiala, discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur continues to train at the National Institute of Sports, even though her coach of the last seven years has not yet been allowed in. On March 19, Kaur qualified for Tokyo with her 65.06 metres throw at the 24th Federation Cup championship, breaching the Olympic qualifying mark of 63.5 metres as well as Krishna Poonia’s previous record of 64.76 metres.
“I am so close to a medal,” she said. For most athletes, the Olympics is only a once, maybe twice, in a lifetime opportunity.
For women, the journey battling prejudice, bullying and stereotypes about girls and sport is that much harder. “The ones who make it fight unimaginable challenges. They are role models for India,” said Deepthi Bopaiah, executive director of GoSports Foundation that prepares athletes for the Olympics and Paralympics, and is supporting 126 Olympian hopefuls, including Kaur and Khanna.
Sport for most women has meant not just recognition, medals and jobs, but also freedom. “When they’re in camps, they are free from all social constraints,” said senior sports writer Sharda Ugra. But an athlete’s professional career tends to be brief, and women athletes have few job options postretirement. “They live from cycle to cycle for as long as they can, till they slide back to marriage, motherhood and all the social rules,” said Ugra. For so many, like Khanna and Kaur, life, and the ongoing pandemic, may not offer a comeback.