I have been treated badly for years by authorities: Seema

Livid with detractors for casting aspersions on her achievements because of a dope-tainted past, Asian Games gold medallist discus thrower Seema Punia today said she has been "ill-treated" by authorities, including the national federation, for many years now.
Seema, who won a gold in the just-concluded Incheon Games, said despite being a top performer for the country in the past 14 years, she received step-motherly treatment from the authorities.
"I am a junior World Championships medallist. I have won medals in three successive Commonwealth Games (2006 to 2014) before I won a gold in Incheon. I have brought laurels for the country for the past more than a decade in my long career and I thought I deserved better treatment but I have been looked upon with suspicion whenever I have achieved something. This is not fair," 31-year-old told PTI in an interview.

Seema was stripped off her gold medal in 2000 World Junior Championships in Santiago after testing positive for a banned stimulant -- pseudoephedrine -- though she had claimed at that time that it was due to a medicine she took for common cold while on her way to Chile from India.
She was issued a warning but two years later, she won a bronze in the World Junior Championships in Jamaica. Later, she was embroiled in another doping controversy just before the 2006 Asian Games and she withdrew, citing "ill-health" of her father.
"I will not look back and I hope to prove my detractors wrong. Now my ultimate target is winning a medal in 2016 London Olympics and if I do that, I think my detractors will be silenced," said Punia, who returned home from South Korea yesterday.

"I heard some people talking about whether I was tested before going to Glasgow CWG and Asian Games. But I want to ask how would government and the federation clear me without testing. I underwent testing by NADA before these two events. I gave the sample after returning from the United States training and then before the Asian Games."
The Haryana-born athlete, who held the national record (64.84m) from 2004 to 2012, said she had to train at home for the whole of last year after the NIS Patiala refused her request to accommodate her in a separate room along with her husband and coach Ankush Punia, also a former international discus thrower.