Swapna Barman: 21-year-old braves severe toothache to win historic heptathlon gold at Asian Games

Swapna Barman created history by becoming the first Indian heptathlete to win an Asian Games gold, a feat she achieved despite competing with pain due to a toothache.

The 21-year-old Barman logged 6026 points from the seven events competed for two days. En route the title, she won the high jump (1003 points) and javelin throw (872 points) events and finished second-best in the 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 after which she had collapsed during the Asian Athletics Championship last year in Bhubaneswar. But despite finishing fourth today, she emerged a champion at the Games. 

Another Indian in the fray, Purnima Hembram was 18 points behind Japan's Yuki Yamasaki, going into the 800m run, but she finished just ahead of Barman and overall fourth with 5837 points.

Qingling (5954) won the silver and Yamasaki the bronze medal with 5873points. 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.

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 Guangzhou edition.