Not wanting to go back, she hung around the national camp. Until the chief coach asked her what she was doing there when she had been advised to return. That moment, she decided that she was going to show him and the world what she could do. And she did, when she became the first Indian athlete to win a medal at the World Athletics Championship in 2003; she won the bronze in long jump. She went on to win a gold at the World Athletics Finals two years later. She also holds the women's national record for long jump in India.
This fighting spirit is what she wants to impart to the 16 women athletes she is mentoring at her academy—the Anju Bobby Sports Foundation. “It’s always good to have a mentor if you are in sports,” she said at the Alliance Literary Festival in Bengaluru. “For me, my husband Bobby [George, who was also her coach] was that mentor. He would support me no matter what. I had full faith in him.” These 16 women, she says, came to her at the ages of 14 or 15. They looked up to her as a role model. And now, she wants to train them so that others look up to them. “People have asked me when I will write a book,” she said. “I never managed to win an Olympic medal, even though it had been my biggest dream. I will write a book when one of my girls wins it.”
この記事は THE WEEK India の March 16, 2025 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は THE WEEK India の March 16, 2025 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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