Hima Das created history on Thursday when she became the first athlete from India to win a gold medal in a global event.
The 18-year-old achieved this feat by winning women’s 400-meter race at the IAAF World U-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland. However, while the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) was just as proud of the young athlete, a tweet from their official Twitter account left many netizens seeing red.
“Not so fluent in English but she gave her best there too,” read a tweet from the AFI that featured a video of the young athlete speaking after her historic win. Check it out:
#HimaDas speking to media after her SF win at #iaaftampere2018 @iaaforg Not so fluent in English but she gave her best there too. So proud of u #HimaDas Keep rocking & yeah,try ur best in final! @ioaindia @IndianOlympians @TejaswinShankar @PTI_News @StarSportsIndia @hotstartweets pic.twitter.com/N3PdEamJen
— Athletics Federation of India (@afiindia) July 12, 2018
Users slammed the federation, saying that her spoken English shouldn’t take away from her achievement. Das went on to win India’s first track gold at World Championships.
The Federation later posted an apology but also clarified that they didn’t mean to mock Hima’s English but were only trying to say that the sprinter is not scared of anything and takes on all kinds of challenges, be it on the track or off it.
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