NEW DELHI: Livid with detractors for casting aspersions on her achievements because of a dope-tainted past, Asian Games gold medallist discus thrower Seema Punia on Tuesday said she has been “ill-treated” by authorities, including the national federation, for many years now.
Seema, who won a gold in the just-concluded Incheon Games, said despite being a top performer for the country in the past 14 years, she received step-motherly treatment from the authorities.
This is not fair,” 31-year-old said in an interview.
Seema was stripped off her gold medal in 2000 World Junior Championships in Santiago after testing positive for a banned stimulant — pseudoephedrine — though she had claimed at that time that it was due to a medicine she took for common cold while on her way to Chile from India.
She was issued a warning but two years later, she won a bronze in the World Junior Championships in Jamaica. Later, she was embroiled in another doping controversy just before the 2006 Asian Games and she withdrew, citing “ill-health” of her father.
“I will not look back and I hope to prove my detractors wrong. Now my ultimate target is winning a medal in 2016 London Olympics and if I do that, I think my detractors will be silenced,” said Punia, who returned home from South Korea on Monday.
“I heard some people talking about whether I was tested before going to Glasgow CWG and Asian Games. But I want to ask how would government and the federation clear me without testing. I underwent testing by NADA before these two events. I gave the sample after returning from the United States training and then before the Asian Games.”
The Haryana-born athlete, who held the national record (64.84m) from 2004 to 2012, said she had to train at home for the whole of last year after the NIS Patiala refused her request to accommodate her in a separate room along with her husband and coach Ankush Punia, also a former international discus thrower.
“I requested the NIS to provide a separate accommodation with my husband inside the NIS as a few other athletes were doing the same there but the head of NIS said no. I and my husband were allotted separate rooms in the girls and boys hostels but my husband’s room did not have an air conditioner. So, we left the NIS and trained the whole of 2013 at home in Meerut,” said Seema
“I trained at the sixth battalion Police Training Centre in Meerut the whole of 2013 and was deprived of top-class facilities in the country.(PTI)