The Hindu : Sport : Hopeful Anju leaves for Thailand today

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Wednesday, Feb 08, 2006

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Sport

Hopeful Anju leaves for Thailand today

Stan Rayan

— File Photo: A. Shaikmohideen

UNFAMILIR TERRITORY: Lack of experience, as far as indoor competitions are concerned, will prove to be Anju's biggest hurdle.

Kochi: Watching indoor athletics makes you believe that the stars would be safe and secure with a roof over their heads. There's no rain to trouble them and they certainly don't have to worry about the wind factor.

But indoor athletics is a strange world.

"Often, there are strange hollow sounds when you run indoors," Anju George told The Hindu on Monday night as she got ready for this Friday's Asian Indoor Championship in Thailand and next month's World Indoor Championship in Moscow.

"And the track is very close to the spectators' gallery."

That's because indoor tracks are usually assembled, a sort of temporary arrangement, and athletes take time to find their running and jumping rhythm. And with the spectators so close, they are easily distracted.

Season opener

The ace long jumper will be leaving for Pattaya, which opens her athletics year, on Wednesday. The Thai event will serve as a warm-up for the Moscow championship where the world No. 4 will be jumping on March 11.

Getting used to the indoor feel also isn't easy. "We get better grip outdoors as we use (spikes with) 9mm nails but indoors we use only 6mm nails because the synthetic track is a lot thinner," said Anju.

The Russians, who figure heavily in the long jump world list this year, and other Europeans are quite at home indoors since they have regular indoor meets.

Tatyana Kotova, last year's world leader, also leads the world list currently with a 6.91m indoor jump at the Sparkassen Cup in Stuttgart last Saturday.

New element

"And a Cuban, Yargelis Savigne, is also doing well now," said Bobby on Monday night, virtually adding a new element to the list of jumpers Anju should be watching out for in Moscow. "She jumped 6.81m recently."

Anju had planned for some indoor training in Doha after her recent South African camp but there were visa problems. "They had forgotten to put the `exit' seal after my last visit to Qatar and this created a problem," explained the Asian Games champion who will be leaving for Bangkok on Wednesday.

Well-deserved rest

These nights, while Anju takes a well-deserved rest after hours of training, Bobby is glued to the internet, watching what the rest of the long jumping world is up to.

"Olympic champion Tatyana Lebedeva (who is also the defending indoor world champion with 6.98m in Budapest in 2004), Kotova... all the world's best will be there in Moscow," said Bobby.

The Moscow meet will just be Anju's third indoor competition. "My first-ever major international meet was the Indoor World Championship in Birmingham in March 2003," said Anju. "And I had finished seventh."

That history should give Anju a lot of confidence. Also, the fact that she had won a silver in her last major, the IAAF World finals in Monaco last September.

So, what will the winning jump be in Moscow?

"I don't think they will cross seven metres. Probably, 6.8m or 6.9 should fetch the gold. But don't ask me what I'll be doing ...you'll have to wait and watch," she said laughing. Ten days after Moscow, she will be competing in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Sure, we'll be waiting ... and watching.

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