When she returns to India... to Meerut, the stadium that awaits her can't hold a candle to 'the Big Lotus'. The Uttar Pradesh government-run Kailash Prakash Stadium, which was built in 1951, is in a poor condition with no facilities for athletics. Several athletes are forced to travel to New Delhi, Sonipat, Rohtak, Karnal, Kurukshetra and even Panchkula routinely on pool cabs. All this, just so that they can run.

It doesn't seem fair. When Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath praised the Meerut athletes, Parul and Annu Rani (she won gold in women's javelin), for their achievements at the Asian Games on Tuesday evening, he might not have been aware that both the athletes brought laurels to the country without having a facility for their disciplines in their city.

And it is not just them. Kiran Baliyan (shot put bronze), Karthik Kumar (10,000m silver), Gulveer Singh (10,000m bronze) and Seema Punia (discus bronze), who also hail from Meerut and neighbouring districts like Aligarh and Saharanpur, all have to face the same issues when they return home.

The venue had an eight-lane grass track for the athletics hostel, but it deteriorated after the facility was shifted to Saifai Sports College, Etawah in 2005. The pain of not having an international facility for athletics in Meerut was shared by race-walker Priyanka Goswami with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a virtual interaction before leaving for the Tokyo Olympics.

“We need to have an international athletics stadium here in Meerut as well as qualified coaches. If we have all this, many more athletes from Meerut would be able to bring laurels to India at world events,” Priyanka had said.

But not much has changed since then.

"Even now things remain unchanged as we don’t have facilities for high jump, steeplechase, javelin throw, shot put, discus, hammer and even for running," said Anu Kumar, secretary of the Meerut District Athletics Association. "Instead of laying a synthetic track here, the government has laid a hockey astroturf and the other part of the stadium is being used for the construction of a shooting range. Even the athletics stadium in Saharanpur (123 km from Meerut) is yet to start functioning."

“Even if our top athletes like Annu, Parul, Kiran, Seema, Priyanka and Rupal Chaudhary (world U-20 double medallist -- silver in 4x400m relay, bronze in 400m) aren’t in the national camp, they prefer training at border districts where the facilities are available,” said Kumar.

He, however, believes that by the time UP’s first sports university in the name of hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand is established in Meerut, many more athletes would have left the city to train elsewhere.

“We have more than 700 athletes here in Meerut alone but in the absence of facilities for proper training, most of our athletes are living in rented rooms in borders districts to avoid daily commuting and training hard,” said Kumar, a former national-level long jumper.

Silver medallist in 200m at the 2006 South Asian Games at Colombo and gold medallist in 4x100m relay, Vishal Saxena, too, isn't very happy with the state of affairs.

“We have no option but to travel to Delhi or Sonipat daily with our trainees,” said Saxena, who is also Rupal's coach.

He said the government-run Kailash Prakash Stadium now has limited space for athletes to train. “The muddy and uneven ground of the government stadium here doesn’t have a proper track, and even for an event we hardly get any equipment or support from the local authorities,” said Saxena.

The only synthetic running track in the city is at the Delhi Public School, Meerut and that is available to athletes only for the championships. UP Athletics Association CEO PK Srivastava said international standard athletics facility at Meerut should be established without delay.

"Despite having just four synthetic tracks for athletics in UP., including three in Lucknow alone, athletes from Meerut have earned a stellar reputation across the world. Kerala has 11 tracks in 14 districts and we have just four in UP, and that too in 75 districts. The figures show that despite having no facilities, our athletes have been doing wonders,” he added.

Uttar Pradesh’s director of sports, RP Singh, said besides having top athletics facilities at the sports university in future, the government has decided to establish a synthetic running track at Meerut soon.

“There was no specific reason for establishing an international standard athletics facility at Saharanpur and not at Meerut. Now, we have the proposal of a synthetic running track at Meerut and it would be established soon,” said Singh, a former India hockey captain.