Tokyo Olympics 2020: Casteist attacks on Vandana Katariya’s family heartbreaking and shameful, says captain Rani Rampal

New Delhi: India women’s hockey team captain Rani Rampal has extended her support to teammate Vandana Katariya whose family was subjected to casteist slurs recently. Speaking to an online media conference organized by Hockey India, Rani called the attacks on Vandana’s family “sad, shameful, and heartbreaking.” The incident occurred after the team went down to Argentina in the semi-finals. Two upper-caste men reportedly danced outside Vandana’s house in Roshnabad near Haridwar and mocked the family. One of the miscreants is learned to have said that the team lost because it had too many Dalit players in it. Vandana is the only Indian woman to score a hat-trick at the Olympics. She achieved the feat in team’s 4-3 win over South Africa in the final pool match. “It is a very sad incident. This kind of discrimination and comments should not have a place in our society. When we play for India, we don’t care which caste, creed, region, or religion we come from. All we care for is India.

“We give our blood, sweat, and tears for the honour of the country, and when he hear of such incidents, it just breaks our heart. Forget a player, this should not happen to anyone in the country,” the captain said. Rani added that the team is slowly coming to terms with the narrow 4-3 loss to Great Britain in the bronze medal playoff. “It hurts because we were so close to our first Olympic medal. All of us came to Tokyo with the aim of going back with a medal. We are really sad that we couldn’t do that, but the love, respect, and support we are getting is unprecedented,” she said. The Indian women, who finished last among 12 teams at the Rio Olympics in 2016, staged a memorable comeback after losing their first three matches to Netherlands (5-1), Germany (2-0), and Great Britain (4-1). They went on to beat Ireland (1-0), South Africa (4-3) to book their place in the quarter-finals, where they knocked out one of the pre-tournament favourites Australia (1-0). “The team had a lot of belief. We went to the drawing board to analyse where we went wrong. We realised that even in the loss against Holland, we played very good two quarters. Our coach and support staff were instrumental in engineering the comeback,” the captain said. The team lost a tense semi-final (1-2) to Argentina before going down fighting to Great Britain (4-3) in the bronze medal match.

What an amazing game, what an amazing opponent 🙏@TheHockeyIndia you've done something special at #Tokyo2020 - the next few years look very bright 👏 pic.twitter.com/9ce6j3lw25

— Great Britain Hockey (@GBHockey) August 6, 2021

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