GUWAHATI: For 18-year-old Hima Das, it has been a spectacular rise from the paddy fields of rural Dhing in Assam’s Nagaon district to making India proud by becoming the first Indian woman to win gold at the World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland on Thursday.
Hima earned the prized yellow metal by winning the 400 metre final.
Despite a slow start, her sprint in the final 80metres saw her clock 51.46 seconds as she overtook three of her competitors.
Hima, however, was a favourite to win gold as she is the under-20 season leader in this quarter-mile event.
Das clocked an Indian under-20 record of 51.32 seconds to finish sixth in the Commonwealth Games 400m final in Gold Coast in April. She was only 1.17 seconds behind gold medalist Amantle Montsho from Botswana.
In the 4×400 metres relay she was part of the Indian team that competed in the final where they finished seventh in a time of three minutes and 33.61 seconds.
Since the promise shown at the Commonwealth Games, Hima has gone on to improving her timings. She lowered the Indian under-20 record in 400m to 51.13 seconds while winning gold at the National Inter-State Championships in Guwahati recently.
Hima was seen all pumped up after her feat as she carried the Tricolour on her shoulders and a gamosa (traditional Assamese cotton towel) during the victory lap. “I am very happy to have won gold. I owe this achievement to my coach and everyone in the athletics federation who has supported me,” she had told a journalist after the gold-medal winning feat in Tampere.
The historic feat in Finland is also significant for the sprinter, considering that it has come less than two years from taking part in her first competition – an inter-district competition in Assam in 2016.
Her coach Nipon Das said he wasn’t worried when Hima wasn’t among the top three at the final curve.
“Her race started in the final 80 metres. It has been just two years since she first wore spikes,” Nipon told the media.
The youngest of the siblings and the daughter of a farmer, Hima started off with football, kicking the ball with boys in the mud pits near the rice fields. She was then advised by a local coach to take up athletics.
Her talent was first spotted by Nipon, who is an athletics coach with the Directorate of Sports and Youth Welfare, during an inter-district meet in 2016.
The coach thereafter asked Hima to shift to Guwahati, about 140 km from her village, and convinced the youngster that she had a future in athletics. Her parents were initially reluctant to part with the youngest of six children leave but were later convinced.
Hima joined an elite club of Indian athletes who have won medals at the World Under-20 Championships, which includes Seema Punia (Bronze, Discus throw), Navjeet Kaur Dhillon (Bronze, Discus throw) and Neeraj Chopra (Gold, Javelin throw).
The historic feat which has been praised by politicians, sportspersons, celebrities and personalities, couldn’t have come at the right time with the Asian Games in Indonesia just about a month away.