India's 400m women's record holder, Hima Das, could drop her favoured event for shorter sprints in the coming year because of a lower-back injury that has affected her 2020 and 2021 seasons.
According to Sportskeeda, an Athletics Federation of India official said the injury that forced Das to switch to 100m and 200m sprints in 2021 could prolong her absence in the 400m race through 2022.
“Hima competed in short sprints (100m and 200m) events in the 2021 season. She will continue to focus on both 100m and 200m in the 2022 season too,” the AFI official said. “She is attending the national camp in Kerala and practicing to polish her skills for short sprints races.”
The lower-back pain has been troubling her since 2019, when she even quit the 400m event of the Asian Athletics Championships halfway through the race.
There is much riding on the shoulders of Das, who at 21, is considered one of the top sprinters in the country. She was supposed to represent India in the 4x400m mixed relay event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after a brilliant run at the 2019 Doha World Championships.
But she was forced to skip what would have been her first Olympic Games because she pulled a muscle weeks before the start of the Games.
It was in 2018 when Das burst on to the Indian athletics scene with a 400m gold medal at the World Junior Championships. At the Asian Games that year, she won silver in 400m and gold in the 4x400m women's relay 4x400m mixed relay.
After running in shorter races in 2020 and 2021, the Assamese sprinter was also drafted into the national 4x100m relay team, but they failed to qualify for Tokyo.