BENGALURU --- When the women's 4x400m relay quartet of Nirmala Sheoran, Tintu Luka, MR Poovamma and Anilda Thomas booked India's berth at the Rio Olympics during the Indian Grand Prix in Bengaluru earlier this month, one of their teammates would have been forgiven for pumping her fist harder than others.
At 28, Ashwini Akkunji is raring to have her first go at the Olympics. More than that, it would be a shot at redemption for her.
"I come from an agricultural family in a small village called Jansale, Udupi district (in Karnataka), and in my childhood days I used to run in school," Akkunji says. "My father always encouraged me about sports. The foundation of my career in sport was when I went to a sports school in Bangalore."
Starting out as a sprinter, the young Akkunji tried her hand at 800m as well, before settling on the 400m, encouraged by her father, who observed how her lanky frame and stride-length gave her a natural advantage.
However, it would take a few years, until the preparations for a seminal year in 2010 which brought her in touch with Russian coach Yuri Ogorodnik, that Akkunji began a purple patch in her career.
"The year 2010 was really amazing, because I got a very good opportunity to train under Yuri and the 4X400m relay team; the seniors were really good back then," Akkunji says of a phase when she helped India to relay golds in the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games and the Guangzhou Asian Games, besides bagging the 400m hurdles gold in the latter.
"I learnt a lot of things from my seniors, truly speaking, because they guided me. They told me things about running and also encouraged me a lot."
A dark phase was to follow, when Akkunji and two of her relay teammates were among seven athletes who tested positive for anabolic steroids just prior to an Asian Championship in Japan the following year. Akkunji's voice chokes when recalling the two-year ban that followed.
"Those two years, emotionally and personally as well, were the hardest of my life," Akkunji says. "My morale had really gone down. If my life had been normal then, I could have won gold medal. People used to humiliate us; I know it was a difficult situation. Life was entirely different, between 2010 and 2014."
The ban was lifted 2013, and her first competitive race only took place the following June at the Inter-State Championship in Lucknow. Running the 400m hurdles, she beat her closest competitor by almost nine seconds in her heat. She then clinched the gold with a timing that broke the existing meet record -- held by Jauna Murmu, ironically one of her former colleagues who was also handed out a ban in 2011.
She was ready for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, though this time the Indian team would fall way short of defending the crown they picked up in Delhi, finishing fifth in their heat. In two months' time, Akkunji sat out as her younger teammates smashed the existing Asian Games record -- recorded by Akkunji and her team in 2010 -- on their way to the relay gold in Incheon.
Akkunji stresses the importance of educating athletes about what they are ingesting, while pointing out an inherent flaw in the Indian drug-testing system.
"We don't have any specialised lab here to test. If anyone is taking something, we don't know what we are taking. We (athletes) are not manufacturers; at least we should have one specialist lab where we can test whatever we have taken. It is just a precaution."
Akkunji also demands greater accountability from the nutritional supplements industry, possibly because there were rumours at the time of her ban that the banned substances had been introduced into the athletes due to supplements given by their coaches.
"The supplements industry is just a money-making enterprise. They don't think about athletes. But as athletes, we have to take supplements. Our physical capacity is not that much; we have to train and we need recovery.
"We can't say daal, chawal, roti (pulses, rice and bread) and you'll be an Olympic medallist. I don't think so; it would be foolishness. If daal, chawal, roti was the diet of champions, every man on the street would be a medallist. Everybody is different and we have to think about recovery, diet, and everything."
Akkunji's eyes light up when asked about the prospects of the relay team in Rio. "Our team is really good for the Olympics. Two of the girls are from PT Usha's academy, one of the girls, Nirmala (Sheoran), is from Haryana; she's a really young girl. And we also have (MR) Poovamma, Anilda (Thomas), Debashree (Majumdar) and me.
"People can say anything, but the 4x400m girls will always come in medal reckoning. New girls, anybody, (even) if I am not there, any of the other girls...the 4x400m team is always going to win in Asia and the next Commonwealth Games also. We're going to get medals."