Priyanka Goswami brought India its 27th medal of the Commonwealth Games 2022 when she won an elusive silver in the women's 10,000m race walk on Saturday. Priyanka notched up her personal best, covering the marathon distance in 49 minutes and 38 seconds to join Murali Sreeshankar (silver in long jump) and Tejaswin Shankar (bronze in high jump) as India's third medallist in track and field at CWG 2022.
Priyanka jumped into the lead pretty quickly at the first blow of the whistle and maintained it to come first after the 4000m (4km) mark. With six more to go, she fell behind Australia's Jemima Montag and Kenya's Emily Wamusyi Ngii. After the end of 8km, Priyanka had slipped to third, but a last minute dash with 2 km to go saw the 26-year-old wrest back the advantage. While Montag took gold clocking 42:38, Priyanka covered great ground to overtake Ngii and come second. Bhawna Jat, the other Indian in the competition, finished 8th.
"This is the first Commonwealth Games medal in walking for an Indian woman so I'm really pleased to have created a piece of history," Goswami said after the event. "I wasn't thinking about the Australian (gold medallist Jemima Montag), when you look at what we did at the Olympics in Tokyo and the world championships last month she is a better walker than me. I just concentrated on my own race and I hope to close the gap on her (in the future) step-by-step."
With this, Priyanka became the first Indian woman to win a racewalking medal. It also makes her only the second racewalked to win a medal at CWG. Before her, Harminder Singh had clinched a bronze medal back in the 2019 Games in the 20m racewalk. Apart from her personal best in the 10,000m race event, Priyanka also holds the national record in in women's 20km race walking. She had completed the distance in 1:28:45s at the race walk nationals in Ranchi last year, which had also earned her an Olympic berth in Tokyo.
{{/usCountry}}With this, Priyanka became the first Indian woman to win a racewalking medal. It also makes her only the second racewalked to win a medal at CWG. Before her, Harminder Singh had clinched a bronze medal back in the 2019 Games in the 20m racewalk. Apart from her personal best in the 10,000m race event, Priyanka also holds the national record in in women's 20km race walking. She had completed the distance in 1:28:45s at the race walk nationals in Ranchi last year, which had also earned her an Olympic berth in Tokyo.
{{/usCountry}}Before switching to athletics, Priyanka used to do gymnastics in school; however, she didn't continue for long. She started off her journey in athletics with track events and later moved to racewalking completely. Priyanka then went to secure a bronze medal in her racewalking debut at the 2015 National Games in Kerala. Apart from sports, fashion was the second love for the Uttar Pradesh athlete.