Dutee Chand won the silver in the women’s 100 metres at the Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang.
In her maiden appearance at the Asiad, Chand had run a 11.32 second race in the final, just 0.03 seconds off her national record and that was enough for the sprinter from Odisha to clinch the second position.
Chand, who finished third in her semi-final, was slow off the starting blocks and was fifth at the half-way mark but picked up pace to close in on Edidiong Odiong of Bahrain, who set a mark of 11.30 seconds to win the gold.
In what was a tight finish, Yongli Wei of China was just a shade slower than Dutee and was only 0.01 seconds behind than the Indian sprinter, culminating in a photo-finish.
For Dutee, it will be a bittersweet medal four years after she was supposed to take her Asian Games bow in Incheon. Diagnosed with hyper-androgenism, the International association of Athetics Federation’s rules at the time had denied her a chance to run in the Asiad.
However, Dutee dragged the IAAF to the court after which the governing body for world athletics modified its rules to include middle distance runners, excluding the likes of Chand and other 100m runners.
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