CHANDIGARH: Mann Kaur, the 101-year-old athlete, and her 79-year-old son Gurdev Singh were denied visa to travel to China for taking part in the 20th Asia Masters Athletics Championships as they didn't have proper documents.
Gurdev Singh, talking to the New Indian Express while on his way back from Delhi to Patiala, said that both of their visas were rejected by the Chinese Embassy because they did not have a personal invite from the organizers of the event. The Embassy wanted an invitation from them and we had given them a letter from the Masters Athletics Federation of India with our visa applications, said Singh.
"Due to this, we had to suffer a financial loss of Rs 44,000. We had to cancel our flight tickets from Delhi to Shanghai and from Shanghai to Los Angels (USA) and further to Toronto in Canada. We also had to cancel the hotel bookings in China, which we made at our expense. Also now, we can't visit our children in the US," Singh said.
Singh said that his mother was looking forward to winning medals in the event and said that the 101-year-old was set to compete in several categories — 100-metre and 200-metre races, shot-put and the javelin.
The 20th Asia Masters Athletics Championships at Rugao in China started on September 24 and is slated to continue until the 28th of this month.
"Both of us had trained hard for the event over the last few weeks and visa being denied came as a surprise to us," he said, adding that he too was to take part in the long jump, 100-metre and 200-metre races.
Earlier this year, Kaur, who is also known as the "miracle mom from Chandigarh", had won the 100-metre race at the World Masters Games in Auckland. She and her son were to participate in the Championships which started on September 24 and is to continue till September 28.
Kaur, who took up athletics at the age of 93 years, won her first medal in 2007 at the Chandigarh Masters Athletics meet. She has also been nominated for the prestigious 'Laureus World Best Sporting Moment of the Year 2017' Award,'' he said.