Dutee Chand

Apart from record-breaking firsts on the track, this professional sprinter is also India’s first openly lesbian athlete. A lesson in courage, will and championship, Sheree Gomes Gupta meets the accidental crusader and national icon

- Sheree Gomes Gupta

In August, Dutee Chand signed her first endorsement deal with global sports giant Puma. A little over a decade ago, when she was about seven, India’s ace sprinter was training for her school’s sports day along the riverbank—barefoot, tiny stones painfully poking into her feet as she ran. Chand is from a family of Odisha-based weavers who just about managed to make ends meet. Back then, she was encouraged by her older sister, Saraswati (a state-level runner), to pursue sports as it would help her get a job through the government sports quota and ease their financial situation. In addition to training, Chand would help her family of nine work on sari weaves to make ends meet.

Today, as we sit here, in her plush room at the Four Seasons in Mumbai, just over a month after she clinched the gold medal in 100 metres at the World University Games in Naples, making her the first-ever Indian woman track and field athlete to do so, clocking 11.32 seconds, it’s clear that Chand has not let fame get to her. Instead, she has used her acclaim as a platform to come out about her sexuality and become India’s first openly gay athlete. She insists she is “a simpleton”—her warm, infectious smile winning me over immediately. “I come from a poor background, I’ve seen struggle. Money will come and go, but I will continue to be grounded.” She’s candid when she speaks to me about her professional and personal wins and losses as well as her plans to get into politics and philanthropy in the future.

LOVE IS LOVE