Historic Heptathlon Gold Won by Swapna Burman at Jakarta

Swapna Barman has created history by becoming the first Indian heptathlete to win Asian Games 2018 gold at Jakarta in Indonesia. She achieved it despite having a toothache.
The 21-year-old from Jalpaiguri became the first Indian to win the women’s all-round event at the Asian Games, a feat that traditionally would mark her the best woman athlete of the tournament. Going into the final event of the heptathlon – the 800m, Swapna had a 50-point lead and she only increased it further, as her total of 6012 points kept her 72 points clear of the chasing pack.
Barman logged 6026 points from the seven events competed for two days. En route to the title, she won the high jump (1003 points) and javelin throw (872 points) events and finished second-best in shot put (707 points) and long jump (865 points).
Her weakest were 100m (981 points, 5th position) and 200m in which she finished seventh with 790 points. Going into the 800m run, the last of the seven-event competition, Barman was leading China’s Qingling Wang by 64 points. She needed a good run in the concluding event, in which she eventually finished fourth.
It was the same event after which she had collapsed during the Asian Athletics Championship last year in Bhubaneswar but despite finishing fourth today, she emerged a champion.
Another Indian in the fray, Purnima Hembram was 18 points behind Japan’s Yuki Yamasaki, going into the 800m run, but she finished just ahead of Barman and overall fourth with 5837 points. Qingling (5954) won the silver and Yamasaki the bronze medal with 5873 points.
No Indian in the history of heptathlon had won gold before Swapna Barman, with Soma Biswas winning two consecutive silver medals at the 2002 Busan and the 2006 Doha Games and Karnataka’s JJ Shobha winning bronze at the 2006 Games.
Barman was born in Jalpaiguri West Bengal in 1996. She is unusual in having six toes on each foot. Her mother Basana worked on a tea estate and her father, Panchanan Barman, was a rickshaw driver and is bed-ridden after having suffered a stroke in 2013. However, he had to stop this when he had a stroke making life tricky for his four children.
She found it difficult to find the right food and her unusual feet caused her pain because she could not afford extra wide running shoes. Swapna uses her prize money to look after her family who live in a house without a concrete wall. In 2016 she won a scholarship of 150,000 rupees in recognition of the success she had at athletics. She currently trains at the Sports Authority of India campus at Kolkata.
> Pratyusha Mukherjee