Even though there was an abundance of food in the athlete’s dining room on Saturday, Goswami chose to survive on “bread-jam.” She would announce after picking India’s first-ever CWG silver in the 10km race-walk, “Medal se pet bharr gayaa.”
Priyanka Goswami remembers the times she had to limit her food intake while training as a racewalker away from home in Lucknow due to a lack of funds for all meals.
Before she ever made it to the national camp, her father had been fired from his job as a road worker and couldn’t actually afford to send her money to survive in another city where she trained. Even though there was an abundance of food in the athlete’s dining room on Saturday, Goswami chose to survive on “bread-jam.” She would announce after picking India’s first-ever CWG silver in the 10km race-walk, “Medal se pet bharr gayaa.”
This one other time, she found herself weighing her options – whether to go meet a close friend’s parents or not – because she didn’t have enough bus money to reach Ambala. Those days, she believes, are firmly behind her.
It was showering medals all over Birmingham, so she wasn’t sure if her silver would even register. However, it had been a memorable day when her Kenyan rival had actually questioned why she was accelerating, and she had snorted away those small mental games because it had taken her a long time to get here.
“I even got a warning at 6 km, and I think officials do it just to intimidate us. I mean I was thinking, half the distance is over and bhaisaab never saw a problem in my technique. Suddenly why’s he having a problem?” she would laugh.
The chatterbox athlete takes a Bal Gopal idol in a little basket wherever she goes, and she would insist on carrying it to the podium, with volunteers trying to stop her. “But I didn’t listen. I just took it. As if they would stop a silver medallist,” she blustered with a wink.
Anamika 
Harsh