Picture Credit: Twitter
The two-time Asian Games gold medalist Hima Das bounced back on the national stage as she registered a personal best in the women’s 100m for the second time in two days to take home the gold medal at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships 2022 in Chennai on June 11.
Assam’s Hima Das clocked 11.43s in the 100m final and defeated Dutee Chand, who finished second in 11.44s at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Dhanalakhsmi Sekar, who was the fastest in Turkey last week is the fastest time by an Indian this season with 11.26s, didn’t participate in the 100m race.
Reacting to her performance, Das tweeted about her return to running after a long injury-driven hiatus. Her tweet said, “Happy to make a comeback after an injury and hard work of nearly 2 years. Looking forward to give my best in the circuit in the upcoming events. Thank you, everyone, for your love and blessings.”
The 21-year-old was forced to pull out of the 100m and 4x100m relay finals last year due to her hamstring injury. She ran in the 200m final but finished fifth to miss out on the Tokyo Olympic qualification. "I will miss my first Olympics due to untimely injury when I was close to achieve the qualification standard in my new event 100m and 200m," Hima said in a post shared on her Twitter addressing her injury.
"I would like to thank my coaches, support staff and my teammates for their continuous support. But I will make a strong comeback and looking forward to Commonwealth Games 2022, Asian Games 2022 and World Championship 2022."
"I have fully recovered from all the injury concerns," Das
Then in February 2022, Das updated about her fitness and her training regime during an event with Adidas. She talked about completely recovering from the injury and getting back to running shape. "Generally, we would be training abroad but due to the Covid-19 situation, things are different," she said.
Of course, you miss training abroad but here (in Thiruvananthapuram) things are going well. I have fully recovered from all the injury concerns I faced in recent times and just looking forward to competing in all the events coming up. It is time to look ahead."
