 |
| Hari Shankar is among those identified as promising talent |
Calcutta: Bengal?s prodigy, high jumper Hari Shankar Roy, looks finally set for the bigger canvas. He has shown enough talent and promise with his national record-breaking 2.25m jump at the Asian All-Star meet in Singapore, and when his West Bengal Athletic Association mentors met the top brass of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and Union sports minister Sunil Dutt, a ray of hope had emerged.
Talking to The Telegraph from New Delhi on Wednesday, AFI secretary Lalit Bhanot added a more official touch to the plea. ?Yes, Hari Shankar is among those identified as promising talent for the future ? less the Doha Asian Games, but more the Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India ? and, along with the rest, we will provide the best training facility and coaching for him?
This particular observation is important in the backdrop of the new, improved AFI vision of ?looking less at Asian level meets and more at world level meets.? Hence the Doha Asian Games seems to be only a minor stopover on the route, and ?no effort shall be spared to get into the medal tallies of world meets.?
The AFI has identified this batch of youngsters ?who will be the right age, four to six years from now,? as Bhanot put it.
?Look, by the time the top meets come around again, The Anju Bobby Georges, the Soma Biswases, the K.M. Beenamols and such will no more be able to give their best. Athletes like Hari Shankar, Manjeet Kaur, Rajwinder Kaur (girls who were in the Olympic relay team which made it to the final), Seema Antil, Harwant Kaur and Geetha, all around the age of 20, will be the stars of tomorrow.
?Hence we need to look beyond the current crop of athletes, who will probably last Doha and no more,? he said. ?We were concentrating on priority events, but that has come to be nearly 30 events now, considering the prospective timings and measurements we are dealing with in juniors. Long jump, triple jump, combined events (heptathlon, decathlon), relays and even sprints, see us mostly among the top 15 and in some even among the top six or seven. It is an absolute must that we translate this to medals.?
That?s where Hari Shankar fits in. There was a minor move for positioning a coaching stint with Cuban high jump world record man Javier Sotomayor, but Bhanot has pooh-poohed that. ?I absolutely don?t feel that the best athlete is always the best coach (long-jumper Anju?s stint with Powell notwithstanding),? Bhanot said. ?We will arrange the best for the promising ones and follow it through.?
That means Hari Shankar of Jalpaiguri ? now bound for the second Youth Commonwealth Games (in Bendigo, Australia from November 30 to December 5) camp ? will be on a par with the likes of Anju Bobby George, training facility-wise. The rest is upto him, and to that end this Junior Commonwealth meet is very important.
The basic training idea of the AFI, though, remains the same, so far. Ukraine and Belarus remain in the spotlight despite a longish doping shadow on them.
?Look, doping is everywhere, in the US, in the UK, and in Belarus and Ukraine, but you should know what to leave and what to take. I have personally inspected all facilities there, and they are way superior to what we can give here. The results showed in all the better timings and measurements in Ath- ens.?
Soma Biswas had told this correspondent in Athens that her stint in Ukraine was ?useless, in fact unhelpful to the extent that I could have been injured.? Bhanot said that was definitely not the case.
?She had come in late (having qualified late too), and then she was at just about the same time zone as Athens. She also did her personal best in Athens. The Ukraine help did show,? he said.
The big picture is slowly taking shape, and maybe for the first time the regional accent will be off Indian athletes? attitudes.