Future plan for Dutee Chand: Crowd-funding, stint at US Olympic centre
Having secured the right to run again, Dutee Chand will now be racing against time to earn qualification for the Rio Olympics in a year’s time.
Having spent the past year away from formal training and distracted by the uncertainty of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision, the 20-year-old will need to reclaim her peak form that brought her into reckoning as a junior last summer. Anglian Sports, her chief sponsors, are planning to start a crowdfunding initiative to help Chand train at Chula Vista, California’s United States Olympic Training Centre, and are aiming for a target of Rs 6 lakh (monthly) to secure training for the athlete, for the next 6-8 months.
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The entire training costs would come upto Rs 35-50 lakh, though given the international support that Chand’s received the facilitators are hopeful of collecting the funds.
Chand has plenty of catching up to do, if she has to aim for the sprints qualification mark of 11.32 s for 100 m and 23.20s for the 200m when looking ahead to Rio having battled the hyperandrogenism regulations. “We want to stich up the logistics together so she can make up for lost time and try and qualify for the Olympics next year,” Maneesh Bahuguna, Anglian CEO, said. “It was a huge setback for Dutee after the Commonwealth Games, and she’s not currently in striking range of the qualification marks. But we are confident that if anyone can qualify it is Dutee. But she should get started immediately and we are looking for well-wishers who will help her in this journey and help us give her the best training facilities and a shot at qualification,” he added.
Dutee Chand is said to have been keen on training abroad, but insisting that long-time coach N Ramesh travel with her at all times. “Her individual coaching costs can come to Rs 3.5 lacs, and will include the ground facilities, a coach, physio as well as boarding-lodging.” The accompanying coach would take it upto Rs 6 lac.
Another alternative being explored is Jamaica, home to some of the world’s best sprinters currently.
Chand’s progression has gone from 12.5 to 12.0 to 11.89 to 11.80 to 11.7 to 11.6 in her u-16, and her personal best of 11.62 came at Donetsk in 2013 (200 m, she clocked 23.73 at Ranchi the same year.) Indian women have scarcely, if ever, qualified for the marquee sprints at the highest stage of competition, but Dutee Chand’s progress had been encouraging, till the hyperandrogenism test skidded her progress just prior to the Commonwealth Games last year.
Through the testing times of last year when she went about brooding over her future at Bhusaval through railway TC training and then prepping herself to argue the case at Lausanne, athletics had taken a backseat.
