Back into the limelight after serving a two-year ban due to a dope offence, two-time Asian Games gold medallist Mandeep Kaur today said that she has silenced her critics who thought her career was over with her feat in the just-concluded Incheon Games.
Punjab girl Mandeep was a member of the gold-winning Indian 4x400 relay quartet in the 2010 Asian Games also, but she was banned for two years from 2011 till 2013 for steroid doping only to return to top-flight competition this year only.
"Those two years were so painful but I did not lose hope. I wanted to come back and I knew I could do it. But I never thought that I could come back like this and win a gold in the Asian Games so soon," Mandeep told PTI on the sidelines of a felicitation event.
Besides Mandeep, the three other members of the 2010 relay quartet -- Ashwini Akkunji, Manjeet Kaur and Sini Jose -- were also handed two year bans, and the government denied them entry at the national camps and training at government facilities.
"We were shooed away from everywhere we had approached for training. We were told we cannot use any government facilities. I feel that my gold in the Asian Games was a slap on the face of those people who had treated us like that," said 26-year-old runner.
The same quartet had also won a 4x400m relay gold in the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games before the doping scandal in 2011 had made them pariahs of Indian athletics for some time.
The ban ended last year and the likes of Akkunji returned to competition almost immediately but an injury kept Mandeep out for another year. She returned this year at the Federation Cup in Patiala in August and she said she's now in for bigger things.
