'Daughter changed how village saw women in sports'

Annu Rani “throws like a girl”. When she was a teenager growing up in the village of Bahadurpur in UP, that meant she was doing it wrong. Hurling javelins was not what those in her village pictured a girl doing right, or at all. In a decade since then — in which she has gone on to break the women’s javelin throw national record eight times, become India’s first woman to breach the 60-m mark and only the second to represent the country at the Olympics javelin throw event — the meaning of the phrase has changed in Bahadurpur.

'Daughter changed how village saw women in sports'
Annu Rani “throws like a girl”. When she was a teenager growing up in the village of Bahadurpur in UP, that meant she was doing it wrong. Hurling javelins was not what those in her village pictured a girl doing right, or at all. In a decade since then — in which she has gone on to break the women’s javelin throw national record eight times, become India’s first woman to breach the 60-m mark and only the second to represent the country at the Olympics javelin throw event — the meaning of the phrase has changed in Bahadurpur.