She thought little of the meeting in Delhi, because she assumed it was for a doping test.īut when Chand arrived in Delhi, she says, she was sent to a clinic to meet a doctor from the Athletics Federation of India - the Indian affiliate of the International Association of Athletics Federations (I.A.A.F.), which governs track and field. She wondered if she would make friends, and how she’d manage there without her beloved coach, who had long been by her side, strategizing about how best to run each race and joking to help her relax whenever she was nervous. Now, as she took the five-hour bus ride to Delhi from a training center in Punjab, she thought about her impending move to Bangalore for a new training program. They had not imagined a different life for their seven children, but Chand had other ideas. Her parents, weavers who earned less than $8 a week laboring on a government-issued loom, were illiterate. The family home was a small mud hut, with no running water or toilet. Earlier that month, Chand won gold in both the 200-meter sprint and the 4-by-400-meter relay at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Taipei, Taiwan, so her hopes for Scotland were high.Ĭhand was raised in Gopalpur, a rural village in eastern India with only intermittent electricity.
Chand, then 18 and one of India’s fastest runners, was preparing for the coming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, her first big international event as an adult. One day in June 2014, Dutee Chand was cooling down after a set of 200-meter sprints when she received a call from the director of the Athletics Federation of India, asking her to meet him in Delhi.