Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Meet the track babes
|
The South Asian Athletics Championship is likely to be an Indian show all through but teams like Maldives and Bhutan will add colour to the event, says STAN RAYAN
|
Photo: Vipin Chandran
GETTING SET The Maldives team preparing for the South Asian Athletics Championship in Kochi
At an age when many Indians take their first few steps in sport, Eema Nadeem is already in the senior national team. The 13-year-old is the youngest competitor at the South Asian Athletic Championship which opens colourfully at the Maharaja’s Stadium on Friday.
Her country, Maldives, is also the babe of the championship and the average age of its seven-member women’s team is just 15.
When the championship gets to serious business, after the opening ceremony, it will be an Indian party through and through. Stars like Anju George, Sinimole Paulose, Mayookha Johny, Chitra Soman and Hari Shanker Roy will be closely watched. But in their shadows, there will be many like Eema and Bhutan’s Kinley Tensin who will be looking for some valuable lessons and getting their first feel of a synthetic track.
“I’m very excited…a bit nervous too. It’s my first senior international championship,” said Eema, a 4x400m relay runner who, like many in the Maldives team here, took to the track at eight. Her dad was a member of the Maldives football team and later became the national volleyball coach. Eema loves chicken dishes but for her teammate Mariam Afnaan, it’s “octopus, fried and spicy.”
As Eema spoke, her talkative teammate Hasna Hanim kept pulling her leg. “You’re not smiling,” said Hasna, 15, a 400m relay runner. All the girls are from the same school, Aminiya, in Male.
Hasna is the daughter of one of the biggest names in Maldives athletics. Her dad, Mohammed Hanim, ran in the 1988 Seoul Olympics and was also the national team’s head coach for the 2000 Sydney Games and the next Olympics at Athens.
Surprisingly, Mohammed Hanim, a sprinter and long jumper, retired at 25, an age when many in his events would be close to their peak.
“I retired because we didn’t have people in coaching in our country, I was in the sprints group and I decided to study coaching,” said Hanim who did a one year’s coaching course in Japan.
“If we concentrate on little kids, our future will be bright,” said Hanim. “Eema is only 13 but she is running the 400m in 76 secs. It’s a very good time. By 18, she will run below 55 secs.”
Maldives does not even have a single synthetic track and the girls retire from sport early. “After they finish school, they find jobs and most of them quit by 18 and 19,” said Ahmed Faail, the national sprints coach. “And that’s why we have such a young side here.”
The three-member Bhutan team has been making the most of the Star Lagoon, the air conditioned ‘championship village’. “It’s too hot outside, we mostly go out after dinner,” says Sonam Tobgay, a middle-distance runner. “We have only grass tracks in Bhutan and we train on a 200m track.”
The Bhutan athletes don’t have any hopes of pushing the Indians on track. “We’re good in archery, taekwondo and boxing but nowhere in athletics,” says Kinley.
One of the must-do items here is a trip to the beach. They love Indian movies too. Sonam Tobgay is a big fan of Arjun and Ramba while Sonam Rinchen adores Sunny Doel and Kinley worships Hrithik Roshan.
For sure, they will be filling the movie halls after the track show.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
