As India hailed athlete Hima Das for creating history at IAAF World U20 Championships, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) picked on her for “not being fluent in English” as she spoke to the media.

On Thursday (12 July), Hima became the first ever Indian track athlete to bag a gold medal at IAAF U-20 event.

She won the 400m race in 51.46 seconds in Tampere, Finland.

AFI’s official Twitter page uploaded an interview of the 18-year-old after she qualified for the final of the race.

The federation wrote, “#HimaDas speking to media after her SF win at #iaaftampere2018 @iaaforg Not so fluent in English but she gave her best there too. So proud of u #HimaDas Keep rocking & yeah,try ur best in final! @ioaindia @IndianOlympians @TejaswinShankar @PTI_News @StarSportsIndia @hotstartweets (sic)”.

This tweet did not go down well with netizens. AFI was trolled. It had misspelt speaking as "speking", which was highlighted by Twitter users.

A user named Rohit Ram, rightly pointed out that Hima was in Finland to run and not to display her English speaking skills.

“She has landed in Tampere for displaying her talent in track and not in English😐 Its shame on you @afiindia for what you said🤥,” he wrote.

Like him, there were several other angry responses.

This prompted AFI to apologise. This time, they tweeted in Hindi, asking sorry from all Indians.