Know Your Heros ft. Swapna Barman - Seven steps to success

Born in Jalpaiguri in 1996, Swapna was into athletics very early on in her life. However, her focus has mostly been on high jump, with her regular coaches being the teachers in school and club, her father and brother.  But, her life was going to change.

“Being a high jumper and junior back then, I didn’t have much training to do for the rest of the day after my regular morning training. So, I used to sit and observe others when they trained. They used to do hepta, one event after another. I started gradually doing little events with them. 

Heptathlon, as the name suggests, consists of seven events that every heptathlete has to compete in. It has 100m hurdles, high jump, shot out, 200m, long jump, javelin throw, and 800m. 

According to iaaf.org, Swapna’s personal bests stand at – 25.81s in 200m, 2:16:20s in 800m, 13.90s in 100m, 1.87m in high jump, 6.03 in long jump, 12.34m in shot put, 46.17m in javelin throw. As of June 29, 2018, Swapna sits in the 88th rank worldwide with 5725 points. 

Pain has been a constant ally for Swapna throughout her career. Since childhood, her unusual feet with six fingers was the reason she had to train with smaller shoes. In her 2014 interview with News 18, Swapna had described her plight and how she tried local manufacturers to get her custom-made shoes but they all turned out to be substandard.

“The grip was poor and the pressure points were all wrong. Normal shoes for five fingers have always been my enemy. Practicing during warm up has also been a huge problem, the palm shoes mainly was painful," recalls Swapna. 

It was a back pain that she had first developed in 2014 while she was taking part in the Asian Games in Incheon, and it came back to haunt her later that year during the IAAF World Athletics Championships in London. After struggling to compete in London, where she managed to finish second last at the 26th position with a total of 5,431 points, Swapna had revealed that she had been struggling with the pain for the past three years. 

If that was the outcome of her strongest suit, one could easily make out the sheer mediocrity of the others. Swapna could only clear a distance of 10,81m in shot put, took 26.45 seconds to run 200m race in, covered 5.53m in long jump, threw the javelin to a distance of 43.49m and somehow managed to finish the 800m race in 2 minutes 20.17 seconds. Claiming that she would have overcome her personal best had she been fit, Swapna had then stated that she needed a long rest to get over the pain and that the 2018 Asiad was her next big target.

It was heavily covered by the media followed by a brief stint if silence. Hence, when asked about the same during the interview, Swapna put it to bed by one small line, “Yes, the injuries are okay at the moment. My focus next is the Asian Games.”

Unlike London, where, Swapna revealed, the athletes found it difficult to adapt to the conditions, Jakarta is expected to have similar weather conditions and Swapna stated that the squad would leave for the competition on August 23.

Swapna’s long-term injury revelation following her collapse in London had led media to go to the crux of why a gold medalist at the Asian level was not getting enough money and facilities to tend to herself. And soon it was revealed that coming from a family that had always struggled to meet both ends, Swapna was bearing the cost of her bedridden father. A rickshaw puller by profession, her father has been bedridden following a stroke when Swapna was still young. Tending to her father, Swapna had to participate in small competitions here and there and consequently could never recover fully. Her coach had also revealed that her physical and mental strains had kept her from performing at the top level. 

Life has also improved for her and it was reflected in the voice during the interview. She seemed excited about the future that is full of possibilities now. “My father is okay now. He’s willing to work but I have strictly asked him to take rest. I will take care of it,” said Swapna, with the last sentence giving us more hope than ever.