ਕਮਲਪ੍ਰੀਤ ਕੌਰਕਮਲਪ੍ਰੀਤ ਕੌਰ

Kamalpreet Kaur is an Indian discus thrower from Punjab's Malwa region who holds the national record of 66.59 metres, set in 2021, and finished sixth in the women's discus final at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She was the first Indian woman to throw the discus beyond 65 metres.

Early life in Malwa and the Badal training base

Kamalpreet Kaur Bal was born on 4 March 1996 and grew up in a farming family in Kabarwala village, near Malout in Sri Muktsar Sahib district, Punjab. Her father, Kuldeep Singh, is a farmer, and she was at first reluctant to pursue athletics because of the family's modest finances and her mother's initial opposition. Her father's support changed that, and a sports teacher at her school in Badal introduced her to athletics in 2011 and 2012, entering her in zonal and district meets. She began with shot put, finished fourth at her first state meet, and was second in the discus at the under-18 national junior championships in 2013.

In 2014 she joined the Sports Authority of India centre at Badal, the village where she went to school, and switched fully to the discus, the event suggested to her at the centre because of her height and build. She stands 6 feet 1 inch tall. Profiles by Olympic Channel and the Athletics Federation of India at the time described her simply as being from Badal, after the school and training base where her career was made. She became national junior champion in 2015 and under-18 and under-20 national champion in 2016, and she completed her higher education at Punjabi University. Alongside sport she joined the Indian Railways as a clerk, which gave her family financial stability and a team to represent in national meets.

Rise through the national titles

Kamalpreet won her first senior national title in 2016, taking gold at the Open Nationals in Lucknow with a throw of 54.25 metres, and she kept winning senior national titles over the following three years. In 2017 she finished sixth at the World University Games in Taipei with 55.07 metres. Her distance grew steadily: 61.04 metres at the Inter-Railway Championships in Lucknow in 2018, then gold at the 2019 Federation Cup in Patiala with 60.25 metres. At the Asian Championships in Doha in 2019 she finished fifth with 55.59 metres.

The road to Tokyo was not smooth. The postponement of the Olympics during the Covid-19 pandemic shut down her training, and her coach Rakhi Tyagi later said she had felt depressed during that period and played cricket in the village playgrounds to cope. Before the 2021 season she shifted her training base to the National Institute of Sport in Patiala, a move that set up the biggest throws of her career.

The record-breaking spring of 2021

On 19 March 2021, at the Federation Cup in Patiala, Kamalpreet produced one legal throw of 65.06 metres. It was enough for everything at once: a new national record, gold ahead of the veteran Seema Punia at 62.64 metres, a place at the Tokyo Olympics past the 63.50 metre qualifying mark, and a place in history as the first Indian woman to throw the discus beyond 65 metres. The record she broke, 64.76 metres, had belonged to Krishna Poonia since 2012. It was her second Federation Cup gold in a row, after her 2019 title.

In June 2021 she improved her own record again, throwing 66.59 metres at the Indian Grand Prix 4 at the National Institute of Sport in Patiala. At the time it ranked as the sixth best throw in the world that year. Her coach Rakhi Tyagi, a Sports Authority of India coach, could not travel to Tokyo because her name was not on the accreditation long list, so she guided Kamalpreet by phone from Patiala through the Games.

How far did Kamalpreet Kaur throw at the Tokyo Olympics?

In Olympic qualification in Tokyo, Kamalpreet threw 60.29 metres, then 63.97 metres, then exactly 64.00 metres on her third attempt, the automatic qualifying mark. She was one of only two throwers in the field to reach that mark, finishing second in qualification behind Valarie Allman of the United States at 66.42 metres, and ahead of the defending champion Sandra Perkovic and the world champion Yaime Perez.

In the final on 2 August 2021, held through a rain interruption, her best throw was 63.70 metres, which placed her sixth on her Olympic debut. Allman won gold with 68.90 metres, Kristin Pudenz of Germany took silver and Perez took bronze. Kamalpreet's 63.70 metres was the longest discus throw by an Indian woman at an Olympics, passing Poonia's 63.62 metres from London 2012, and ESPN described the sixth place as the third best performance by an Indian in a field event at the Games.

The 2022 doping ban, stated plainly

In May 2022 the Athletics Integrity Unit provisionally suspended Kamalpreet after a urine sample she gave in an out of competition test in Patiala on 7 March 2022 tested positive for stanozolol, a banned anabolic steroid. On 12 October 2022 the AIU banned her for three years, with the period of ineligibility starting from 29 March 2022, and disqualified her results from 7 March 2022 onward. The AIU said she had not established how the substance entered her body. A protein supplement she had used was found on laboratory analysis to contain stanozolol, but that did not change the finding. Because she admitted the violation early, the four year period that would otherwise have applied was reduced to three years. The ban ruled her out of the 2023 Asian Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Her Tokyo 2020 results and her 2021 national records were set before the sample date and were not affected by the disqualification.

What her record still means

Kamalpreet Kaur's 66.59 metres remains the Indian national record in the women's discus throw, and she remains the first Indian woman to pass 65 metres in the event. Her career, from a farming family near Malout, through a school sports teacher in Badal and the SAI centre there, to an Olympic final, showed how far a thrower from a small Malwa village could go in Indian athletics. The three year ban that followed is also part of her record, and this page records both parts of her story as they were reported and ruled on at the time.