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Asha Roy Was Once Our Fastest Runner, Now She Can Hardly Make Ends Meet Even For Basic Necessities

If you were to mention the name Asha Roy to the average Indian, well truth be told, most would not know who she is. And who can blame them? She has been pushed into the background so much that her contribution to Indian athletics has pretty much been forgotten.

So who is she? Well, at one point of time, Asha was the fastest runner India ever had.

No, we are not kidding, this lady was built for speed. Born in Ghanshyampur, a village in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, her father was a vegetable seller and her mother a housewife. But she fought against adversity to make it to the top.

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At an early age Asha displayed the skill that would make her one of our best athletes in the new century. In 2004, she won four gold medals in the school games and 2006 saw her take second place in the 100m and long jump at the Junior Nationals. The base for greatness was being built.

In 2011, at the National Open Athletics Championships, Asha won gold in 100m and 200m races, silver in the 4X100m relay. Now the country was beginning to take notice of a budding talent. But it was only a sign of things to come.

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2013 saw her win the gold at the Indian Grand Prix 200m. A silver followed in the Asian Athletics Championships and she seemed destined for greater things. But it proved to be a false dawn.

In 2015, while preparing for the Olympics the next year, she got injured at the camp. The waist injury was so bad that she could not train and missed out on the Games. As a result her career took a downward turn. Lack of infrastructure prevented her from recovering and soon she was no longer considered for major events.

Lack of support from the authorities meant she struggled to make ends meet. Now she can barely put food on the table and in the end the country she represented has forgotten about her.

She is just another one of those athletes our country has forgotten. So much so, her name has been forgotten from our sporting past. She has faded into oblivion and not only do most of us not remember who she was, many do not even know that she existed to begin with.

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