Dutee Chand’s goal is not to be better than anyone else but to be better than she used to be. She was able to build a better self in all aspects, and India’s professional sprinter is going from strength to strength to show the world what she is capable of doing.
Even now she made a real case for herself as one of the viable women athletes as she won the gold medal in the 100-metre event at the National Open Athletics Championships in Ranchi on Friday. She even broke her personal best.
She won semifinal clocking 11.22 seconds and went on to bag the final with a time of 11.25 seconds. The previous record in the women’s 100m event was 11.26 seconds, held jointly by Dutee Chand, at the Asian Athletics Championship 2019 and Rachita Mistry, recorded in 2000.
Dutee brought the best out of herself and had reduced 0.04 seconds from her previous personal best of 11.26 seconds. She also inched closer to the qualification mark for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
It should be noted that the qualification mark for the 100m event has been set at 11.15 seconds, with the qualification time ending in June next year.
Dutee Chand needs to cut down a little further of 0.07 seconds to accomplish her goal.
On July 10, she scripted history as she 11.32 seconds to clinch the gold at the World University Games in Naples, thus becoming only the second Indian ace sprinter to win gold in an international event after Hima Das, who completed on top in 400m at the World Junior Athletics Championships last year.
Talking about previous achievements, she won the gold medal in women’s 100-metre sprint at the 30th Summer University Games in Napoli, Italy and thereby becoming the first Indian to achieve the marvellous feat. She clocked 11.32s in the final.
Early life:
Dutee Chand was born on 3 February 1996 to her parents Chakradhar Chand and Akhuji Chand in the Jajpur district of Odisha. She is from economically backward sections of society. She is from a below poverty line weavers family.
For Chand, it was her elder sister Saraswati Chand who inspired her to the core in tough times. Saraswati Chand competed in running at a state level and she backed her young sister always. Dutee Chand’s beautiful venture sparked in 2012 when she became a national champion in the under-18 category when she clocked 11.8 seconds in the 100 metres event.
She ran like the wind and clocked 23.811 seconds to win the bronze in the Women’s 200 metres event at the 2013 Asian Athletics Championships at Pune. In the same year, she became the first Indian to seal the final berth of a global athletics 100 metres final in the 2013 World Youth Championships.
In the same year itself, she became the national champion in 100 metres and 200 metres when she clinched the events at 11.73 seconds in the final in 100 metres and a personal-best 23.73 seconds in 200 metres at the National Senior Athletics Championships at Ranchi.
She continued to dominate the sport as she won two gold medals in June 2014 at Asian Junior Athletics Championships in 200 metres and 4x400m relays. She actively took part at the 2016 Asian Indoor Athletics Championships in 60 metres and showcased her mettle in the qualification round where she made yet another Indian national record to her lofty standards of sprinting as she clocked 7.28 secs and went on to win the bronze medal in the final at 7.37 secs.
Dutee clocked 11.33 secs in women’s 100m dash to bag the gold beating the previous national record set by Rachita Mistry’s 16-year-old of 11.38 secs in the 2016 Federation Cup National Athletics Championships in the national capital.
Things didn’t go down too well for Dutee when she missed the Rio Olympics qualification of 11.32 secs by one-hundredth of a second. But, it was on 25 June 2016, Dutee beat the very same National record twice in a day after achieving at 11.24 secs at the XXVI International Meeting G Kosanov Memorial at Almaty, Kazakhstan and hence she qualified for the Olympic Games.
At Rio 2016 Olympics, she proved herself yet again as she became the third Indian woman to take part in Women’s 100 metres. In 2017, at Asian Athletics Championships she won two bronze medals, one in the Women’s 100-metre category, another in the Women’s 4×100 m relay with the likes of Srabani Nanda, Merlin K Joseph and Himashree Roy at Bhubaneswar.
