The likes of Devesh Chauhan will gain from IHF’s move

Calcutta, May 22: The IHF is suddenly going ballistic over the training programme of its players for the Athens Olympics.

Not only have two foreign tournaments been added to the pre-Olympic itinerary, there was a German outtake of a camp. Now a US physical training camp has been added to it all.

Seems pretty impressive, in the face of it. Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) secretary K. Jyothikumaran told The Telegraph that this will be a “three-week intensive training camp” and the federation’s media man pointed out that this change in plan means “the US camp will be followed by the German camp. Nothing is being left out.”

It is also interesting to note that this US camp, to be held at the American Olympic Preparation Institute in Arizona (where the temperature is the same as in Athens) will be conducted not by American experts and Indian coaches, but by a “team of German experts which will include gold medallists from the Barcelona Olympic Games”. This is a team that is involved with the Bundesliga of hockey.

If that isn’t impressive, then one has to just notice the fact that most of the American sportspersons who will be going to Athens will be training there as well. The “facilities, hence, will be the best.” There will be training in recovery, first step, off-field and what not.

Olympic gold medallist and selection committee member Gurbux Singh believes this is a good move, though he says use of computers wouldn’t be totally new. “We have had that before, with national coach Cedric D’Souza involving that (before the Atlanta Olympics), it depends how it will be implemented.”

The representatives of the US agency were in New Delhi recently to present their case, but Jyothikumaran pointed out that the US decision was actually taken at the suggestion of the German experts.

Regarding the use of a new software for goalkeepers, Gurbux feels that it could be similar to something that he had seen in 2000, at the Sydney Olympic Games. “That was a software geared for tennis,” he said, “and I saw how the different physical parameters — dynamic and potential — of the player were being shown and analysed.”

He said it was possible that the same software, by a company called Sportec, could have been adapted for hockey. “Goalkeeping is a specialised job, and needs special attention,” he said. “And anyway, goalkeeping coach M. R. Negi had said that he wanted to introduce new techniques.”

All this will be implemented away from this country. Team leaves as soon as the US visas are through, maybe end of this month or first week of July, Jyothikumaran said.

The question is whether such dramatically new procedures will fall under the category of “experimentation”, a word that has become anathema in Indian hockey circles, that too, so close to the Olympics.