IN 1987, the SAI started its Special Area Games project to pick out natu-rally endowed athletes at a young age from the tribal populations of the country and train them for the Olympics. Out of them only archer Limba Ram made it to the Asian level. A promising woman hurdler, Kamala Siddhi, didn't even make it to the national level. And H. Philips, originally chosen for athletics, graduated to become a boxer but his aspirations fizzled out after he got a job with the Tatas.
Says K.O. Bosen, former national athlet-ics coach and now at NIS, Patiala: "There's been a big slump after 1985 when the athletes turned commercial. There's been a lot of 'let's take what we can while we can' attitude. They run out of the desire to do well after they get a job or something. We also have a very low depth in our disciplines. Take men's hammer throw. We have just one good thrower in Sukhdeep Singh, who's got a national record of 66.72 m. The Asian record, held by S. Murifussi of Japan, is 75 m plus. The world record stands at 86.76 m in the name of Yuri Sydhik of Russia. But Russia has 10 hammer throwers in the 80-plus category. We have no broadbasing of talent at the top."
Says Alexander Krasilchikov, an Ukrainian professor in training methods empl-oyed with the SAI for five years: "India's problem is not that its athletes are becoming worse but that others are becoming better faster. For long, Indian athletes were insulated to what was happening in the rest of Asia." They were almost of the same theory and practice level but Japan, the two Koreas and Vietnam launched government programmes, used foreign coaches and sent their coaches abroad for training and that pushed them ahead. Says he: "Till last year, India was producing coaches in just 10 months. It takes from four to six years in other countries."
Bosen regrets that the army is not taking much interest in sport. Says he: "Till the '70s, over 80 per cent of our athletes had an army background. Today, it's less than 5 per cent." But, as Krasilchikov says, you have to give your athletes the best shot. "National champions, whether good or bad, need the best facilities."
