Forget gold, knee injury almost crushed Swapna’s chances
Heptathlon gold medallist went against doctor’s advice to compete at Asian Games
KOLKATA:SUCH was the scrum as Swapna Barman emerged at the Kolkata airport on Friday afternoon that her coach Subhas Sarkar got left behind even as she was bundled into a white SUV. It was only after Barman frantically gestured to the driver to stop that the police cordon relented, enabling Sarkar to hop in.
At 2:18 pm, Barman came home. That is what the eastern regional centre of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in Salt Lake has been for her since 2012. The trainees, till the other day her peers in pursuit of excellence, stood on either side of the tree-lined road for a guard of honour. India’s first heptathlon gold medallist from the Asian Games deserved no less, they felt.
It was a medal that wasn’t almost coming. Less than three weeks before the Games, Barman, 21, was told to get ready for surgery. “It felt like the end of a dream,” said Sarkar. As someone who had seen an Asian Games high jump medal slip out of trainee Hari Shankar Roy’s hands in 2006, Sarkar wasn’t new to heartbreaks. Yet this one stung. “She was hitting near 6000 regularly in training and that meant a medal was assured. Then you are told that surgery is the only way to repair a Grade 3 meniscus tear,” said Sarkar.
Injuries have been Barman’s constant companion; she missed all of 2016 because of a back problem. It got aggravated after the Asian Track and Field last July where Barman won gold with 5942 points.
In the lead-up to the Asian Games, Barman’s ankle hurt and she had pain in her lower abdomen. But for someone with three track events to take part in, a knee problem she could not deal with. Sarkar and Barman travelled from Patiala, where she was training before Jakarta, to Mumbai where a doctor advised surgery on July 30.
If there was a silver lining, it was this: the surgery could be delayed. So, aided by hydrocortisone, Barman resumed chasing an Asian dream.
But the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) wasn’t convinced. “The AFI made it clear that no one would travel with injury,” said Sarkar. Barman would only be cleared after trials, the AFI ordained. And she did.
“I knew that she had trained so well — six-and-a-half hours daily — that if her pain could be managed, she wouldn’t go below 5800 and that would be enough for at least a bronze (5842 points fetched that in Incheon),” said Sarkar. Just when the coach thought the worst was over, Barman came down with a crippling toothache in Jakarta. It cost her a vital day’s training and for the first time perhaps, Sarkar told her that he didn’t expect a medal. “All I told her was that she should put up a fight,” he said.
6026 was what Barman achieved and the dream of winning an Asian Games medal that Sarkar had nurtured from 1992, when he joined SAI, came true. So what’s next for Barman? A trip to the dentist first, tending to her injuries next, said Sarkar. After that? 6300 is my target, said Barman. That is 89 points more than JJ Shobha’s 14-yearold national record.