2. Dutee Chand
India's international competitive sprinter Dutee Chand was born to a poor weaver couple in Odisha. It was tough for her father to support a family of nine which included six daughters, but he always asked his daughter to give her best shot in athletics.
When Dutee was 18, she was barred from competing against female athletes by AFI and IAAF due to the “hyperandrogenism” she suffers from, which causes her body to produce high levels of testosterone.
Instead of accepting the ruling, she brought this matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, which ruled in her favour. Thanks to the landmark ruling, she again started running again and first broke the 16-year-old national record of 11.38 seconds in the 2016 Federation Cup.
Although she missed the Olympic qualification mark by 0.01 second, later she clocked 11.30 seconds in Almaty, Kazakhstan and beat the Rio Olympics qualification mark of 11.32 seconds.
The 20-year-old has well and truly arrived on the Indian athletics scene.
