Livid with detractors for casting aspersions on her achievements because of a dope-tainted past, Asian Games discus gold-medallist angry at critics saying she has been 'ill-treated'
Seema Punia celebrates her gold-medal winning performance at the Asian Games. Pic/Getty Images.
New Delhi: Livid with detractors for casting aspersions on her achievements because of a dope-tainted past, Asian Games gold medallist discus thrower Seema Punia yesterday said she has been “ill-treated” by authorities, including the national federation, for many years now.
Seema Punia celebrates her gold-medal winning performance at the Asian Games. Pic/Getty Images.
ADVERTISEMENT
Seema, who won gold in the just-concluded Incheon Games, said despite being a top performer for the country in the past 14 years, she received step-motherly treatment from the authorities.
Deserve better
“I am a junior World Championships medallist. I have won medals in three successive Commonwealth Games (2006 to 2014) before I won a gold in Incheon. I have brought laurels for the country for the past more than a decade in my long career and I thought I deserved better treatment but I have been looked upon with suspicion whenever I have achieved something. This is not fair,” 31-year-old said.
Seema was stripped off her gold medal in the 2000 World Junior Championships in Santiago after testing positive for a banned stimulant — pseudoephedrine — though she had claimed at that time that it was due to a medicine she took for common cold while on her way to Chile from India.
She was issued a warning and two years later, she won a bronze in the World Junior Championships in Jamaica. Later, she was embroiled in another doping controversy just before the 2006 Asian Games and she withdrew, citing “ill-health” of her father.
“I will not look back and I hope to prove my detractors wrong. Now my ultimate target is winning a medal in 2016 Rio Olympics and if I do that, I think my detractors will be silenced,” said Punia, who returned home from South Korea on Monday.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
