Bhubaneswar: Big-ticket sporting events such as Olympics and Commonwealth Games have been a spectacle for sport-loving Indian audiences, who take the occasional breaks from an overdose of cricket and open their hearts to some unheralded athletes of the country. For athletes, success at these quadrennial events translates to overnight social media stardom, months of media attention and countless felicitation ceremony offering their new hero a grand welcome and fortune.
The rags-to-riches stories of the likes of Hima Das and Mirabai Chanu are recent examples of it and are serving as an inspiration to billion dreams.
However, amid these fairy tales being reiterated enough times, lost are the struggles of some forgotten names, who came agonisingly close to eminence before becoming mere footnotes. The burden of such failure or misfortune often takes a toll on them and that’s what happened to a certain Purnima Hembram, whose name appears to be lost in oblivion since her 2018 Asian Games failure.
Ahead of the Asiad that year, the then-25-year-old athlete was tipped as the favourite to win a historic gold medal in the heptathlon after a brilliant domestic season. However, an untimely hamstring injury dashed her medal hope as she watched her junior colleague Swapna Barman become the first Indian heptathlete to win gold and live a life that Purnima probably dreamt for herself.
“Many found their happy ending in Jakarta that year but not me,” Purnima tells Firstpost. “I had to return home a failure despite finishing fourth while competing in pain.”
A niggle during a domestic event in Guwahati two months before Asiad would go on to become a recurring injury but was ignored by the athlete as she also posted her personal best of 5898 points. A repetition of the same performance in Jakarta would have at least ensured a bronze medal but the excruciating pain limited her points aggregate to 5837.
Returning to India empty-handed meant Purnima watched from far as Swapna became the darling of the nation while her state-mate and sprinter Dutee Chand was also lauded in Odisha for her twin medal success.
“I went into depression after Asian Games. Going out of the medal run at the last event was too hard to take. After coming back, people around me started losing faith in me as well,” says Purnima, who hails from Odisha’s Mayurbhanj.
The road to recovery wasn’t getting any easier for the athlete as the injury kept coming back upon recuperation, puzzling the physios at the AFI national camps in Patiala.
This expectedly affected her performance as her career graph spiralled down with a disappointing fifth-place finish in the 2019 Asian Athletics Championship; ending the heptathlete’s consecutive bronze medal run at the event since 2015.
The result was the last straw for Purnima, who left the Patiala national camp in search of medical help elsewhere in Dr Bibhu Nayak, who heads the sports injury centre at Safdarjang hospital in New Delhi.
Losing father during pandemic
While undergoing treatment, Purnima suffered a personal loss as her father, Dukhia, died due to deteriorating health conditions during the pandemic. The tragedy hit the eldest sibling of the Hembram family hard as she lost her love for the game.
“Papa’s death shook me really hard as I lost my love for the game because I felt I couldn’t do enough for my father. Things could have been different if I had won a medal in Jakarta.
“I didn’t feel like coming to the stadium anymore as it filled my heart with sorrow every time. I decided to leave for Patiala and stayed there for a few months doing nothing,” shares the 29-year-old, who now looks after her mother and two younger brothers.
Finding lost love for heptathlon in Bhubaneswar
Going through the dark times, Purnima soon mustered the courage to pull herself out of the low by finding her lost love for the game. In absence of a coach at NIS Patiala, Purnima turned to her home state for help and got in touch with Reliance Foundation Odisha Athletics High-Performance Centre, whose head coach Martin Owens agreed to train her; a decision that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the athlete. The state-of-the-art facility of the HPC, run by Reliance Foundation in collaboration with the Odisha government in the capital city’s Kalinga Stadium, gave Purnima a new lease of life.
“It was an eye-opener coming to train with Reliance here. Having a team of dedicated strength and conditioning coach, nutritionist and physiotherapist, who use modern methods to study my diet, posture and technique gave me the feeling that I needed this much earlier in my career, ” says the heptathlete.
For the coaching staff of the HPC, Purnima is a joy to work with and are hopeful of going the distance with her.
“Purnima is a good influence on other athletes here, ” says head coach Martin, who earlier served as a running coach with England Athletics. “She has a tremendous work ethic. She is the first one to arrive at the training and is always eager to work hard. Her former coach (Sanjay Garnaik) has made my job easier by training her well which allows us to focus on our goals keeping in mind the season ahead.”
The athlete herself is clear about her objective for the season. Missing out on a medal by a whisker at the 2018 Asian Games is an unfinished business but wants to take one step at a time.
“I want to take what I lost at the Asian Games last time. After the injury, I feel mentally and physically stronger and want to compete first in the new season with the aim to set a new personal best,” says Purnima as one hopes that the athlete will deservingly have her happy ending this time.
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