Who is Srabani Nanda, the Odisha sprinter rewriting India’s map of speed?

The world measured her in seconds,
So she gathered years into the hush before a gun.

A mind without rest,
A body breaking limits,
A silver streak across Seoul.

The lanes she bends: bowstrings,
Her starts: tremors of thunder waiting.

EdexLive honours Srabani Nanda, Devi of Velocity.

Her sprint is no race, it is a refusal.
To let the horizon stay still.

—

In the quiet heart of Kandhamal, Odisha, Srabani Nanda was born into a world that rarely welcomed speed. Yet in her stride, she found her voice. Her first tryst with speed began in the dusty lanes of her hometown as a teenager, when she joined the Government Sports Hostel in Bhubaneswar. 

Under the watchful eye of Nila Madhab Deo as her coach, she began running not just against athletes, but against futures others drew for her. Her effort pushed her to national meets, to the international stage.

Her personal bests — 11.36 seconds in the 100 metres and 23.07 in the 200 — speak not just of speed, but persistence refined. She ran these distances not for records alone, but to carry with her the weight of invisible constraints.

In 2016, she made it to Rio, representing India in the women’s 200m. While she did not advance beyond heats, she had crossed a threshold few from her region ever would. A decade earlier, she had already recorded a bronze in the 4×100m relay at the Commonwealth Games 2010 in Delhi. 

Then, in 2025, she and her relay team clinched silver at the Asian Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea, proving once more that speed carries even further when shared among comrades.

Her race is as much across barriers as it is across lanes. Even as she trained abroad, at Jamaica’s MVP Track Club, she held firm to her roots: a sprinter from Odisha, representing India.

Today, she is more than her stopwatch. Srabani Nanda stands for the possibility that a body meant for running can carry a community’s hopes. That each stride can rewrite a map.