The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : Top athletes for Ukraine, to miss Chennai meet

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Saturday, Jul 10, 2004

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Sport - Athletics

Top athletes for Ukraine, to miss Chennai meet

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 9. The top athletes of the country who have qualified for the Athens Olympics will miss the final selection trials for the Games. Instead, they will be training in Ukraine for a second time in three months. They were at Kiev and Yalta, in two batches, between May 1 and June 12.

The selected athletes have come here from Bangalore where they were training and they should be leaving for Ukraine within the next few days, as soon as visa formalities are completed.

Those expected to go are: Men: K.M. Binu (400m, 4x400m), P. Ramachandran, K. J. Manojlal, Bhupinder Singh and Satbir Singh (4x400m); women: K. M. Beenamol, Manjit Kaur, Rajwinder Kaur and Chitra K. Soman (4x400m), Neelam J. Singh and Harwant Kaur (discus) and J. J. Shobha (heptathlon).

Shot putter Bahadur Singh and woman discus thrower Seema Antil who skipped the entire Asian Grand Prix circuit, have already reached Kiev, along with coach Gurmeet Singh.

The second trip to Ukraine has been talked about the past few weeks. However, initially, the Union Sports Ministry had held its clearance in abeyance, amidst doping allegations.

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) apparently managed to convince the ministry that the trip was absolutely necessary, the main argument being the time lag between India and Greece and the necessity to get used to the change in time zones. Kiev and Athens are in the same time zones. India is two and a half hours ahead of Greece.

The all-India inter-State meet in Chennai, beginning on July 18, will thus be reduced to a formality, though a few prominent athletes are still in the running for places in the Athens-bound team.

Notable among them are shot putters Shakti Singh and Navpreet Singh and woman high jumper Bobby Aloysius who has taken a break from her training in England to be able to compete in Chennai.

The US-based discus thrower, Vikas Gowda, is also scheduled to compete in Chennai. There is no news, however, about another discus thrower, Anil Kumar, who is based in Szombathely, Hungary. Gowda has an `A' qualification mark for the Olympics while Anil only has a `B' norm. It was expected that the performance in Chennai would clinch the argument between Gowda and Anil, unless the latter also gained an `A' norm in between.

Originally, the inter-State meet was expected to be the final selection trials for the Olympics. Now, there is a proposal to advance the circuit meet at Bangalore to July 23 to provide another opportunity for the Olympic aspirants to qualify.

Those who have qualified so far, barring long jumper Amritpal Singh, who has been nursing a hamstring injury, should thus consider themselves as `selected' since they are not even competing in the so-called final trials. There was some argument in recent weeks whether all those who qualify should be included in the Olympic team or not.

The ministry has viewed with some concern the gradual fall in performance levels of the qualified athletes, especially in the women's 400 metres and women's discus, as was evident in the recent Asian Grand Prix meets. It was expected to monitor the performances further during the Chennai meet.

The AFI has pointed out that many of the athletes had competed in an adequate number of competitions in Ukraine during their May-June stint there, though there is no corroboration from the athletes themselves to suggest that they had competed in more than three meets.

A big question mark has cropped up following the AFI decision to send the qualified athletes to Ukraine again and to keep them there till the Olympics. They are expected to join the rest of the contingent in Athens.

Who will dope-test them prior to the Olympics? Without a dope test and a green signal, the Sports Ministry cannot clear the team. The ministry was, in fact, keen to test all the athletes during the inter-State meet in Chennai and, if necessary, again at the Bangalore meet on July 23 after having completed a round of sample-collection last week.

The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has informed all the National federations that dope tests are a `must' before their teams are cleared for participation in the Olympics. The federations will have to arrange for tests in accredited laboratories abroad and produce certificates in the case of those sportspersons who are training abroad, the SAI has ruled. Otherwise such sportspersons would not be allowed to be part of the official Indian contingent. Whether the instructions would be carried out to the hilt is to be seen only.

Individually, it will be impossible for the athletes to get tested at accredited laboratories. Even in batches, through the federation, it will not be all that easy. Keeping that in mind, at least the Indian Weightlifting Federation has instructed the lifters, now training in Belarus, to come back here in time to complete dope-testing formalities.

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