The Athletics Federation of India on Friday put its foot in the mouth when it referred to Hima Das' "not so fluent English" after her blazing run at the world under-20 championships, attracting the ire of fans which forced the governing body to issue an apology in chaste Hindi.
The daughter of a rice farmer from a village in Assam's Nagaon district, Hima scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman to win a gold at the IAAF World Under-20 Athletics Championships, claiming the top spot in the women's 400m final race in Tampere, Finland.
Fans took to the social networking site to express their displeasure against the AFI for tweeting something what could be construed as insensitive.
Miffed, fans ridiculed the tweet and said Das was in Finland to showcase her talent in athletics and not her expertise in the English language.
The severe backlash prompted the AFI to issue a clarification.
We apologise to the country if our tweet hurt sentiments. We merely wanted to show that Hima is fearless whether on the track or outside. Despite being from a small village, she spoke freely with the foreign media. We apologise again to those who were offended.AFI
The 18-year-old Das, a pre-tournament favourite, clocked 51.46 seconds to win the gold.
She now joins star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, who won a gold in Poland in the last edition in 2016 in a world record effort.
Das is the first Indian track athlete to have won a medal in the history of this competition.
The previous medal winners at the World Junior Championships were Seema Punia (bronze in discus in 2002) and Navjeet Kaur Dhillon (bronze in discus in 2014).
(With inputs from PTI)
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