NEW DELHI: There is not a single Indian athlete who heads the season's Asian lists at the moment. The women's 4x400 metres relay team tops the charts, but with a timing (3:38.01) that was clocked in the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in March around which time Manjeet Kaur was running 52.04 seconds for the lap.

Seven months hence and with less than two months left for the Asian Games in Doha, Manjeet, who won the Asian 400m title (51.50s) in Incheon last year, is nowhere near that form. She pulled out of the recent Open National final, complaining of an upset stomach, after timing 57.32 in the heats.

Someone like Satti Geetha, who took the silver at Incheon, timed 55.48 in the Open with Rajwinder Kaur Gill down to 56.77. Geetha was the No. 3 Asian last year with her 51.75 at Incheon while Rajwinder was 13th with her 53.02 in Bangalore.

If you were to listen to the athletes, they are keeping their best or close to it for the inter-State in Chennai and better than that for Doha.

Many of them are supposed to be on the injured list, especially those who have returned from training stints abroad. The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and the coaches are confident that the athletes would `peak' just in time.

There is nothing to back such optimism though, unless one recalls the `magic' of Busan 2002. Barring the feats of women athletes S. Shanthi (800m), O.P. Jaisha and Sinimole Paulose (1500m) and Krishna Poonia (discus), the Open meet did not hold out anything new in the Asian Games perspective. All the four women made the third-place selection criteria to join eight others who had attained the norms earlier.

Additional meet

The possibility of providing an additional meet, at Patiala, before the inter-State, to help more athletes qualify, is being looked into.

In the meantime, rather belatedly, the AFI is fine-tuning a set of criteria though everyone agrees that the athletes should have been told about the yardstick well before the season started. The ambivalence of the Union Sports Ministry has not helped matters.

For the past few years the AFI has been setting its own `medal-winning' criteria. In some events where the Indian athletes struggle to reach the norms, the standards are kept higher than the third place while in some others where the AFI feels it could be profitable to enter one or two athletes, the norms are slightly diluted.

Should the AFI norms be not taking "current performances" in Asia into consideration? Should it not take at least the better performances (compared to last Asian Games) in the 2005 Asian championships into account, keeping in mind the transformation that has come about in many events during the four years from Busan?

No unanimity

There is no unanimity of views here. Asia, especially after the `import' of Kenyans and Moroccans by Bahrain and Qatar, has made rapid strides on the track during the past four years. A prime example can be had in the men's 800 metres where an Asian, Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain, is the world champion and where 16 men broke 1:48 last year.

The third place at Busan, where K.M. Binu was a surprise silver medallist, went for 1:47.77, the fourth 1:47.89. The third place in Incheon was 1:44.74.

This season, six Asian athletes have bettered 1:46, the top four having clocked below 1:45, all of them at IAAF Grand Prix or Golden League meetings. Bahrain's Youssef Saad Kamel at 1:43.61 heads the list. He has four other timings below 1:45.

This is not to discourage youngsters R. Rajeev (personal best 1:48.89) and Sajeesh Joseph (1:50.17) or Francis Sagayaraj (1:48.50), the last-named being absent in the Open, but an attempt to assess the gap that exists between the Indians and the rest. And that gap is looking wider than ever before this season.

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