Negligence leaves Sunita’s Sydney dreams shattered

Thereafter, the extent of her injury was discussed with her coach and was intimated to Major OP Bhatia, Executive Director (Teams) in New Delhi on July 5. Since Sunita is an Olympic probable, it was decided by the NSNIS medical team to send her immediately to Delhi for further specialised treatment.

On Friday, the medical experts at Apollo and Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi concurred with the diagnosis and ruled her out of the tracks for next eight to 12 weeks.

Interestingly, it has been revealed that the middle-distance runner had developed a pain in January this year, but one of the senior doctors at the NSNIS cleared her saying that it was a back pain. This negligence proved disastrous as far as Sunita’s future is concerned.

Sources here said that Sunita had complained of pain on several occasions in the past few months and was under the treatment of the Ukrainian doctor, Dr Yuri Boyko and Dr Ashok Ahuja of NSNIS who unfortunately couldn’t detect Sunita’s ailment. Surprisingly, Sunita was allowed to go for a five-week training camp to Kiev, Ukraine, following the Federation Cup athletic meet held at Lucknow in March. It is also a possibilty that Sunita concealed her injury before going to Kiev.

When asked if the injury was due to overloading on the young athlete, JS Saini, chief coach of the junior team and the person who accompanied her to Delhi, said: “Sunita’s training schedule is looked after by her advisor and coach Renu Kohli. So I am not in a position to comment on what really happened in the last couple of months.”

In fact, Kohli accompanied her protegee to Kiev and despite being injured Sunita was not sent back to India. Instead, she stayed on in Kiev for further three weeks which delayed her diagnosis and treatment.

The experts feel that these sort of injuries can only take place due to over-loading (excessive training) on the athletes by the coaches.