Udupi girl Ashwini over the moon

DHNS

New Delhi, 13 October 2010: The Indian celebrations did not end at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium on Tuesday night. A windfall in medals was reason enough to celebrate but when a gold is part of the haul, it calls for a bigger bash.

 

The Indian women’s relay team of (from left) A.C. Ashwini, Manjeet Kaur, Mandeep Kaur and Sini Jose put up a splendid show to finish ahead of Nigeria and England.

 

Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, AC Ashwini and Mandeep Kaur lapped it all up as they went around the track, with the fans cheering them all the way. India’s only third gold in Commonwealth Games athletics, certainly, got the attention it deserved.

 

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“It feels great,” said Ashwini, who hails from Udupi. “The training we did in Ukraine has paid off. We worked on our curve running and that has helped us tremendously,” added Ashwini, one of three Karnataka athletes to strike a bronze medal on the day -- Services man Kashinath Naik in javelin and HM Jyothi, who anchored the 4x100M relay team being the others.

 

For Jyothi, it all seemed like a dream. “I asked Geetha (who ran the first leg), am I dreaming or what,” said the Chitradurga girl after running through the finish in 45.25 seconds, one hundredths of a second behind Ghana who took the silver. “I feel a bit bad about it, I didn’t see the Ghana runner coming,” said Jyothi.

 

The Indians were in silver position when Ghana’s Janet Amponsah sneaked in from behind to snatch silver with a terrific run.

 

Jyothi had been struggling with illness and ran against doctor’s advice. “Ever since we came back from Ukraine, I have been down with a throat infection and fever.

 

“It was really difficult and I could not even take medicines (for fear of getting caught for doping). It was really tough but I am happy I made it. Back home, my dad was feeling really bad that I wasn’t keeping well but now, he must be happy,” she said.
The weak fields contributed to the Indian success but it isn’t every day that an Indian sprint relay team beats Jamaica.

 

“We didn’t think we could do it, especially because we were running together for the first time in a competition. We did make a mistake in baton exchange (in the first changeover) but it worked out well in the end,” said Srabani.

 

For the men’s relay team, baton exchange was the key. “We didn’t do it perfectly yesterday but were much better today,” said Shameermon, who ran the third leg. “We worked hard and believed in ourselves. God did the rest.”