'We Were Depressed...Faced Misogynistic Comments': India Women's Lawn Bowl Gold Medalists Breaks Down - Watch
Lawn bowls still lack proper support in India. What those 4 women achieved in CWG are a few things extraordinary and also tell us about the toil and dedication of our very own ‘Queens of Bowling’.
New Delhi: Lawn bowl is a sport roughly played and popular among Indians but the women's Lawn Bowl team of Lovely Choubey, Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki Singh, and Nayanmoni Saikia stunned the whole world to make the entire nation proud by winning India's first-ever Lawn Bowl gold in the history of Commonwealth Games.
The women's Lawn Bowl team is in the news after an interview with Jyotsna Mohan on her talk show 'Table Talk with Jo'. The 'queens' of Lawn bowls were in tears as they opened up on the struggles they had to overcome. They talked about the pressure, casual misogyny, and mental harassment they had to tackle before the Games.
Rupa Rani Tirkey, Pinki, Nayanmoni Saikia, and Lovely Choubey have won gold for India at the Rio Olympics. The women opened up about what struggles they had to go through and how they were treated during the games.
Appearing on 'Table Talk with Jo', Rupa Rani Tirkey mentioned how much struggle, humiliation, and harassment they had to go through before winning the medal.
"We were very depressed. A lot of discussions happened about us. It was very demotivating," she mentions in the video, breaking down into tears, as she tells the interviewer about the price they had to pay to win that gold medal by defeating South Africa in the final.
"There was a lot of pressure on us. If we didn't return with a medal from the Games, then maybe there would have been no future of lawn bowls for us in the next edition," she continued.
"Not only that, the team had to be subject to a lot of misogynistic comments as well that “they were even told that they have been selected to the team because of how they looked," Lovely mentioned, unable to control her tears, on the show.
"We had something in us that's why we won a medal, no? Nobody will give us a medal by simply looking at our face," she quested.
All of them made many shocking revelations about our sports industry and the mistreatment of Indian international players. Many cases of misogyny and sexist remarks against female athletes have also previously shown up.