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Athletics on the right track and field

From Chopra spearing an Olympic gold to Paul leaping to CWG triple jump glory, Indian athletes have turned a new leaf, writes Roshan Thyagarajan
Last Updated 14 August 2022, 03:12 IST
Eldhose Paul. Credit: AFP Photo
Eldhose Paul. Credit: AFP Photo
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Neeraj Chopra. Credit: AFP Photo
Neeraj Chopra. Credit: AFP Photo

Often, a picture is worth a thousand words. Occasionally, it is worth more than all the words a nation can conjure.

The image in question was taken on a sunny afternoon on August 6 at the Commonwealth Games. It is one where Abraham Kibiwot is looking over his right shoulder and realises his Kenyan compatriots Amos Serem and Conseslus Kipruto are not running alongside him.

Instead, there is a scrawny Indian in a sweat-soaked blue jersey, grimacing, running as if chased. Kibiwot can hear Avinash Sable’s light steps and heavy breathing. There is obvious consternation in Kibiwot’s eyes. Sable’s eyes are on the finish line.

Kibiwot is used to winning and losing among countrymen, Moroccans and other nations considered middle-distance royalty, but losing to an Indian? The thought had probably never occurred to him until that moment. To his credit, Kibiwot held on, only just. Sarem is but a blur on the right of the same image.

Sable had won silver in the 3000m steeplechase event, 0.05 seconds behind Kibiwot, and became the first athlete since Canada’s Graeme Vincent Fell in 1994 to deny the Kenyans a podium clean sweep at the Games.

The moment, and the corresponding image, are an accurate summary of India’s newfound audacity to challenge the best in the world in track and field events.

India won eight medals in track and field in the recently-concluded Games with one gold, four silver and three bronze.

Besides Sable ending the Kenyan hegemony in the steeplechase event, Eldhose Paul and Abdulla Aboobacker finished 1-2 in the men’s triple jump event. Tejaswin Shankar bagged a high jump bronze. Murali Sreeshankar capped off his impressive long jump stint with a silver. Priyanka Goswamy made the women’s 10000-metre walk look dashing, holding onto a silver medal with her bedazzled nails. Sandeep Kumar fell slightly short of silver in the corresponding men’s event, settling for bronze. And Annu Rani ended with a bronze in the women’s javelin throw event.

At the surface level, an inane argument could be made for ‘dropping’ standards because India won 66 medals in the 2018 edition of the Games at Gold Coast, as opposed to 61 medals in Birmingham. But a quick search will reveal that 16 of those medals in 2018 came from shooting. In fact, 135 of India’s total 564 medals at the Games overall, have come from shooting.

When the sport was cut from this edition, there was a concern. Not anymore.

India’s track and field success was so pronounced this time around that ‘settled’ for silver or bronze became a thing that was said. When did this sea change happen? How? Why? What does any of this mean?

“...it means, we have finally arrived,” says Ashwini Nachappa, her tone laced with the afterglow of India’s success. “We are no more also-rans. We are here for gold. You could see it in the eyes of those who finished with silver and bronze, they were not happy. They want gold. They want to win every single time they are out there.”

“Neeraj changed everything,” she adds.

When Neeraj Chopra won the javelin gold at the Olympics in Tokyo 2020, he became the first track and field athlete from India to do so. And then he went on to win a silver at the World Championships in Eugene, he reiterated his stance as one of the best practitioners of javelin in the world.

Nearly every athlete at the Games spoke of Neeraj as an inspiration in the wake of their own success. Not that they had forgotten Abhinav Bindra’s contribution to the spirit of a nation, but the recency of Neeraj’s achievements, and the fact that they now have a track and field hero, meant they could boldly go where Indian athletes of yore wouldn’t dare to.

Neeraj’s gold for India was akin to Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile for the world.

The floodgates are now open. But, it would be foolhardy to reduce India’s novel athletic prosperity to Neeraj’s impact alone.

The central government’s proactive attitude towards sports since the inception of Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS) in 2014 cannot be ignored. Neither can we push aside the effect private entities such as Olympic Gold Quest, JSW Sports, GoSports Foundation and others have had on the improved structural integrity of sports in recent years.

To streamline the process of identifying and grooming talent, the Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) was constituted in 2w018, and since then, close to 300 athletes are part of the TOPS, and over 100 are part of the core group.

Under the scheme, athletes are provided with specialised training, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and individualised diets by professional nutritionists. Select athletes, PV Sindhu and Neeraj for example, are given specialised training under coaches of their choice, and are offered handsome stipends too.

More importantly, the government and private establishments have made it easier for all national-level athletes to access world-class coaches, sports doctors and trainers. In fact, the Sports Authority of India approved the Athletics Federation of India’s demand for six new foreign coaches in January this year, keeping in mind the 2024 Olympics.

Though injected into a system barely a few months ago, nearly every single foreign coach - each of whom comes at a price of $4200 per month - has delivered a medal at the Games. Also, as a rule, these foreign coaches have to train five Indian coaches during their stint.

This clause was introduced in May this year when SAI gave National Sports Federations (NSFs) more control in hiring foreign coaches by abolishing the process of screening candidates through a comprehensive committee. Instead, a bipartite contract system was established wherein the coach and the federation are directly engaged without SAI’s intervention. SAI will have one member on the selection committee to ensure transparency, but the committee itself will be constituted by the NSF.

“We wanted them (NSFs) to be accountable,” says a source in SAI. “We sometimes forgot to do our job and started getting involved in petty troubles of these NSFs. This step was taken to ensure they will be more professional. We can already tell that they are picking up the slack and doing well. Also, we introduced a cap on their budget so they can be more judicious with their decisions.”

As per revised guidelines on hiring foreign coaches/ experts, NSFs cannot spend more than 30 percent of their Annual Calendar of Training and Competition (ACTC) budget on the salary of recruits. “In doing this, and the new process we have in place, we have a system in place where it should not take more than a week to onboard a foreign coach or an expert,” adds the source.

Also, the coaches have to submit a quarterly report to the respective NSF with a copy marked to SAI in order for the bodies to objectively assess their performance.

Of course, some quarters are not happy with the rise in foreign coaches, insisting that Indian coaches are just as adept. Still, one cannot turn a blind eye to the obvious elevation in confidence and success. More importantly, there is a process in place for grooming the next generation of home-grown coaches, meaning they are not being ignored.

Besides this laudable structure, there is also an emphasis on exposure. While event organisers and NSFs are pushing to host world-level events at home to give home-grown athletes a look at how athletes from outside of India train and perform at the highest levels, athletes are also asked to travel to other countries and partake in international events.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, in a response to a question at the Lok Sabha earlier this month, revealed (the public document is available with Deccan Herald) that around Rs 250 crore was spent for training and competition abroad in 2019 alone. That number spiked to over Rs 500 crore in 2022, with some of that budget spilling into 2023. More pertinently, this sum in its entirety was spent on athletics alone.

“Finally, our athletes are going abroad and training, and getting foreign coaches to come and train us here,” says Nachappa. “We tried so hard to travel abroad for exposure tours, but in our day, it was not easy. Now, it has become accessible, and just look at these results.”

“Trust me, this is going to translate into something big at the Olympics,” she adds.

Irrespective of Nachappa’s prophecy coming true or not, that “we run among giants now” is enough to raise hopes of a time “when we will run ahead of them.” Kibiwot knows.

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(Published 13 August 2022, 14:34 IST)

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