A sprint across the rainbow

Vinayak Padmadeo

‘This is nothing, I have seen worst days,” says Dutee Chand after facing the heat from her family after declaring her love for a girl. But then she has braved a lot in the last five years. And that has made her a fighter — the trials and tribulations she underwent after it was revealed that she has ‘male hormones’ has been the most bitter fight of her life. Or was it?

And so the relentless warrior dismisses the latest attempt to throttle her way of life by force or any underhand tactics by her family as just another skirmish. 

After coming out, Dutee, already being hailed as an activist for athletes impacted by hyperandrogenism, has now become the most famous Indian LGBTQ sports icon. And like her fight to sprint as a woman, among other women athletes, Dutee, the fighter is out slugging against her elder sister Saraswati Chand.

Dutee says she was forced to announce her relationships after her sister started to blackmail her and demanded money to keep mum. Saraswati, who is 10 years older, on the other hand, claimed that her sister is getting blackmailed by her partner’s family. “I have been fighting for so long. First it was for hyperandrogenism because of which I was thrown out of the team. Now I am in another fight to live the way I want to. Bhagwan ne chaha to jaise phir se bhagne ke liye case jita tha to ye fight bhi mei jitoongi (I hope I win this fight by the grace of god just like my earlier fight to return to the tracks). This fight has only started. Let’s see,” says the 23-year-old.

Ironically, the sisters, who are sparring publicly now, used to be in the same corner when Dutee’s world came crashing down in the summer of 2014 when “excess androgen” was detected in her. 

Dutee was called to New Delhi by the then director of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) on the pretext of undergoing a routine doping test in June 2014, when she was en route Sports Authority of India (SAI) training centre in Bangalore to attend the national camp. She had then just made it to the squad after winning a gold medal in 200 metres and as well as in the 4x400 at the Asian Junior Championships in Taipei.

The young athlete was then put through a series of humiliating tests, including an ultrasound, though she had been led to believe that all she had to do was to give a simple blood or urine sample. Post this test, the AFI wrote to SAI to conduct a ‘gender test’ on her. She was then subjected to another series of blood tests, examined by a gynaecologist, karyotyping test to probe her chromosomes and an MRI, during her stay in Bangalore.

And all this while she had no inkling why she was undergoing these tests and what was in store for her. She was later notified that her name has been removed from the participation list for the World Junior Championships and she will not be eligible for selection for the Commonwealth Games because her “male hormone levels were too high”.  Amid all the drama, Dutee kept her poise. “She did not say much as her elder sister spoke on her behalf. But the most striking thing was that she was still smiling,” recalls Dr Payoshini Mitra, an athletes’ rights activist. Dr Mitra was later appointed as Dutee’s adviser when the athlete knocked on the doors of Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against her debarment.

“At that time, Dutee was given three options. First was to quit, the second was to take medical steps to reduce testosterone levels and third was to challenge the regulations. She chose to challenge the regulation,” adds Dr Mitra.

“I won’t undergo surgery or any other procedure. At every level of my life — junior, sub-junior or Under-20 — I have competed the way I am,” she had told this correspondent back then.

On a straight track 

The latest and biggest gay icon at the moment was in a relationship with a boy at that time. The 2014 controversy broke the relationship as rumours of her being a ‘male’ put her boyfriend off.

“We broke off because of the androgenism issue. Sab log ladka ladka bolne lage the (I was being called a boy). He wasn’t comfortable with the whole issue and he called off the relationship. I was left alone to fight. But that was a long time ago. Now I am in a good place with my partner,” she adds.

In a year’s time, Dutee got a big relief as CAS partially upheld her appeal against the IAAF regulation on hyperandrogenism and granted her permission to compete as a women athlete, while giving the world body two year’s time to prove with scientific evidence the quantitative relationship between enhanced testosterone levels and improved athletic performance in hyperandrogenic athletes.

While the world hailed that judgement, the athlete was treated like pariah back home. Dr Mitra, too, was heckled by a few athletes during the 2015 National Games in Thiruvananthapuram, while others refused to stay under the same roof with Dutee. A coach was happy to announce “Dutee Chand nahi Singh hai”. This was just the start of discrimination. “It was one of the worst phases of my life. After when I came back, I was told to stay alone as none of the girls wanted to share a room with me in the training base in Patiala. Previously we used to be housed on twin-sharing basis,” recalls Dutee. During this dark phase she found shelter in Pullela Gopichand’s academy campus in Hyderabad away from all this negativity.

Parental approval

Dutee says that she had broken the news of her relationship to her parents way back then and they were OK with it. “I told them I am in a relationship with a girl, and we are like ‘two sisters’. They told me do whatever I wanted as ‘it is your life’. But now they are criticising me because of my elder sister. She wants me to end this relationship,” claims the 23-year-old after the public spat with her sibling. She also dismisses Saraswati’s claims of blackmail or her plans to get married.

“We don’t get to spend enough time with each other as I stay mostly in Hyderabad for training. I visit her sometimes but I have a career as well. I am still looking to qualify and run at the Olympics. I have not come out to gain public sympathy neither will I marry for same ‘ki duniya ko kuch dikhana hai ye karke’. We haven’t decided on anything. 

“My sister thinks my partner’s family want to usurp my money and property. But let me clarify, it is my money and I will be the sole person to decide how I spend it. But I am not a fool that I will give everything to my partner’s family just because I am in love. I may help them from time to time but I won’t give them all,” she said.

All she wants at the moment is this storm to blow out. Until then she will keep slugging it out with whatever or whoever comes in way of her dreams.