‘Track Queen’ Hima Das of Assam has sought the “blessings” of the people to demonstrate her running prowess even more in the Olympics and have asked them to leave the rest to her vis-à-vis getting a medal as she says, “Give me your blessings, I will do the rest.”
A report published in the The Telegraph quoted Hima as telling to media persons in Guwahati on Saturday, “I run after timing, not medals. If I can keep reducing my time to complete the run, the medals will follow. Right now I am at number 52 among the 400m runners worldwide. I have to compete with 51 better runners. It’s a tough task but I will do my best to live up to the expectations. Even a thousandth of a second matters in international competitions. My aim is to reduce my time from 50.59 to 50.58. To get below the 50-second mark may take a day or a year.”
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The report further stated that Hima clocked 50.59 seconds to win the silver medal at the Asian Games in Jakarta, behind Bahrain’s Salwa Naser who won the gold with a new Games record of 50.09 seconds.
Hima has been continuously reducing her timing in the 400m race. She clocked 51.46 seconds to win the gold medal in the IAAF World Under-20 Athletics Championships in Tampere, Finland, on July 12 last. She had qualified for the Asian Games finals with a national record time of 51 seconds, breaking a 14-year-old record of 51.05 seconds set by Manjeet Kaur in Chennai in 2004.
She had also been the lead runner in the 4x400m women’s relay, enabling the team to clinch the gold. “I managed to give the lead to our team but it was a team effort which led to our securing the gold in the 4x400m relay.”
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Hima said it was up to the coaches and the sports federations to determine where she will train for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She had earlier trained in the Czech Republic.