in patiala in 2013 i was disqualified the reason being over the course of the race at no point can both your feet be midair as it is considered running thats when you risk being disqualified i was quite upset with my performance and i competed for the 50km race the very next day this time i won the silver medal with a registered time of four hours 13 mins as i had developed good ground contact it was then that i was selected for the national teamwhen did you start preparing for 20km racewalking after the epic fail i thought 20km racewalking is not something i will be able to do hence i started competing for the 50km one in the world cup in 2014 that was held in china i improved my timing by 11 minutes and registered a final time of 4 hr 02 minutes which is when i qualified for the world championship that was to be held in beijing in august 2014 i registered a record timing of 3 hr 57 mins however i attempted the 20km racewalking in april 2015 at the iaaf racewalking challenge in portugal and that was when i improved a great extent and completed the race in 12250 sec this was when i qualified for the world championship in japan scheduled to happen in march 2016 which would decide my olympic fatehow did you qualify for 20km racewalking at rio 2016i managed finishing the race in 12026 sec and thus qualified for rio however i missed the national record by five seconds but i knew i was getting better with every race what happened at rio how did you lag behindi knew i would finish in the first ten at the olympics but a sudden cramp in my stomach in the first kilometre of the race actually slowed me down i tried to make it up later but time lost is lost this was a great chance to prove myself but i lost it i finished 13th to register a final timing of 12121 which was about 37 seconds behind the bronze medallist its true that i couldnt bring home a medal but i did leave behind 2012 london games silver medallist erick barrondo from guatemala as well as canadas benjamin thorne who bagged the bronze medal in the mens 20km race walk at the iaaf world championships beijing 2015 the sad part is that i knew i could make it ab aur chaar saal rukna padega apne aap ko saabit karne ke liyewhat do you think indian athletes lose out on in comparison to the other countries in the worldthere is a severe lack of facilities when it come to training athletes in india we hardly have anyone to guide us about our diet and fitness regime we dont have recovery experts to guide us through it is only through selfdetermination and practice that our athletes compete at these games until recently we would bear our own expenses like