Jakarta: The first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games gold, Swapna Barman on Wednesday made a plea to provide her more customised shoes for her 'abnormal' feet. Barman, who has six toes in both her feet, produced her career-best performance on Wednesday by logging 6,026 aggregate points from the seven events spread for two days. She competed with a tape on her right cheek to lessen pain arising out of a tooth infection.
Before Barman, only Bengal's Soma Biswas and Karnataka's J J Shobha and Pramila Aiyappa had returned with a medal from the Asian Games but none of them have won gold. Biswas and Shobha had finished two-three at both Busan Asian Games (2002) and the Doha Games (2006) while Pramila had won a bronze at the 2010 Guangzhou edition.
"I have got this gold on National Sports day, so it's really special. I use normal shoes worn by people who have normal five toes. It really pains during training. It is very uncomfortable, whether I wear spikes or normal shoes," Swapna said. She overcame a knee injury before the event.
Asked if she would like some firms to manufacture customised shoes for her, she said, "Definitely. It will make life easy." At one time Barman's father was a rickshaw puller and bed-ridden due to a stroke. En route the title, she won the high jump (1003 points) and javelin throw (872 points) events and finished second-best in shot put (707 points) and long jump (865 points).
Her weakest events were 100m (981 points, 5th position) and 200m in which she finished seventh with 790 points. Going into the 800m run, the last of the seven-event competition, Barman was leading China's Qingling Wang by 64 points. She needed a good run in the concluding event in which she eventually finished fourth.
It was the same event in which she had collapsed during the Asian Athletics Championship last year in Bhubaneswar but despite finishing fourth on Wednesday, she had emerged a champion.