The Hindu : Sport : Indian Grand Prix from today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
ePaper

Sport

Sport

Indian Grand Prix from today

Kirti Patil

PATIALA: Indian athletics was at its lowest ebb last year with just one gold medal coming from the Doha Asian Games. Athletes disappearing and running away from camps when WADA dope testing teams came calling was another shameful event that put question marks over the way the sport was being administered.

Busy season

The sorry images of 2006 are hard to forget as a new season unfolds at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) here on Wednesday with the Indian Grand Prix athletic meet. This is an year that contains biggest stage for athletics — the World championship — in Osaka. Asian championship in Beirut, from July 28 to August 4, is another reason that the athletes will have to gear up for the busy season.

In this backdrop the season-opener Indian GPholds importance. It would however, be imprudent to expect any high performances as the elite athletes themselves were in no mood to participate in the GP. The 19-member elite athletes have returned just a day before from a 77-day camp in South African high-altitude city of Potchefstroom. The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) stood its ground contending that the athletes had agreed to the calendar before they departed for the camp.

Coach's views

For the AFI, Patiala GP would help identifying the preparedness of athletes before going into the grind of the series of events lined up for the season. ``We had a satisfactory camp in Potchefstroom with some of the athletes showing good improvement in their timings and distances, but to expect them to repeat it here soon after such a long journey without any rest would be too much to ask for,'' said the coach-in-charge of the camp, Ranbir Singh Siddhu.

"The South African camp was aimed at preparing the athletes for major international events, including the Asian and World championship,'' he said. "We also included a few juniors to prepare them for the 2008 Olympics,'' Siddhu added.

Still, a keen contest in the women's discus throw can't be ruled out. Melbourne Commonwealth Games silver medallist, Seema Antil will be up against Krishna Poonia, who won bronze in Doha with a personal best of 61.53m.Joining them in the contest will be Harwant Kaur, who has fully recovered from back injury.

In focus

Also on test will be the much improved 400m National record holder, K. M. Binu and Bhupinder Singh, Manjit Kaur and Chitra K. Soman, both part of the 4x400m relay team that won gold in Doha.

Most of the athletes, now camping at NIS, though said that they were preparing to give their best at the Federation Cup in Kolkata starting on May 10.The coach agreed with them saying that they hardly had any time to settle down before this meet. "We will try to give our best timings in Kolkata,'' he said.

Wednesday's events: Men: 100m, 400m, long jump, triple jump, shot put and javelin.

Women: 100m, 400m, long jump and discus.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport