Women w’lifters ‘can go sky-high’
By S. Rifaquat Ali
STOCKILY-BUILT Hungarian weightlifting coach Imre Zsuga was deputed by IOC Solidarity to run a three-week course for selected Indian weightlifting coaches at the NIS, Patiala. He spoke to the writer on various aspects of Indian weightlifting.

Business as usual for tarnished Olympics
By Andrew Jennings and Clare Sambrook
MANFRED EWALD, once East-Germany’s most powerful sports official, left a Berlin court this month with a smile on his face and a suspended sentence for feeding male hormones to women athletes without their consent. “A relentless fuhrer”, the judge called Ewald, who ruled his country’s dope programme through four Olympics. Women, who had been children chasing dreams during those times, trailed into the witness box to speak of the liver damage and cancers they had since suffered, their sprouting beards, their miscarriages. One told of giving birth to a baby with deformities.

Teeing-off
by K.R. Wadhwaney
Coaching alone will not help
THE Indian golfers, like cricket players and hockey players, are obsessed with technique. They concentrate on developing swing and style. In doing so, they toss about from one coach to another. Many of them seek guidance from foreign coaches, who are paid huge amount for the training they in part.

Are athletes creating new marks clean?
By Ramu Sharma

The Amateur Athletics Federation of India must be very elated these days. Athletics standards appears to have improved by leaps and bounds with the women’s sprint events getting special attention and Shakti Singh surpassing all expectations in the men’s shot put. Progress has also been recorded in the men’s hammer, women’s discus and hammer while Anil Kumar of the Services has steadily continued to run faster, a sub-10.3 seconds in the latest meet in Bangalore eclipsing his own national record of 10.30 set last year. But with improvement comes questions. Are the athletes creating the new marks “clean”? It is a pertinent question but also very natural in modern athletics where there have far too many instances of competitors taking recourse the performance-inducing drugs. All very fair in these days of cut-throat competition according to some but strictly against the laws.

It seems unfair to suspect athletes setting new records but it is in the interest of everyone concerned that some sort of protection be given to old records set by athletes on foreign soil and sometimes having to prove their credentials by submitting to dope tests. P.T. Usha apprehensions are thus understandable. In less then a month she has lost three of four national records. She wants to know if the athletes overrunning her marks were tested. And why not? After all she is one athlete who has been tested more than any other person in India. Naturally so since she has set her records in competitions abroad. Usha’s timely comment on the loss of three records should be viewed in proper perspective. The ace Indian athlete was only asking for a fair deal, not only for her records but for the sport itself. Her three national records which fell were in the 400 metres, 100metres and 200 metres.

K.M. Beenamol started the assault at an international meet in Kiev (Ukraine) in June, topping her quarter-mile record. Two more, the 100 and 200 metres , fell to Rachita Mistry of the Railways and LIC’s Vinita Tripathi, respectively, in the Bangalore meet of July 5. This left just one mark in Usha’s name, the 400 metres hurdles set in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, the mark that catapulted her into fame in the first place.

Usha is right when she says that records like those of T.C. Yohannan’s long jump, Milkha Singh’s 400 metres and her own in the 100, 200, 400 and the 400 mts hurdles were major landmarks in Indian athletics, all of them having been set either in the Olympics or Asian Games. All she wants now is that the persons claiming new marks should have the right credentials. “I am 36 now and more than half of my life I’ve spent on the track, running for my country. I know the difficulties I underwent to win each medal, to set each record. And I would only be happy if I am assured that the records taken away from me are the result of “clean” performances,” said the great athlete.

The AAFI must be complimented for its quick response to Usha’s complaint. Beginning with the third of the circuit meet in Bangalore on July 17, the federation has made it mandatory for all record setters to go through “dope” tests. The federation’s decision is indeed a turning point in the history of Indian athletics. The only snag is whether the federation has the resources to come to the right conclusions. One hopes the existing laboratories in India are well equipped to make the tests.

Meanwhile the federation’s decision to keep in abeyance till after the Asian Championships in Jakarta in August the ratification of the new records has been received with some reservations. On the face of it, it is not fair to the athletes who have performed well. It is not their fault that the hosts of the competitions did not carry out the necessary “tests”. At the same time it would have been totally unfair to grant legitimacy to the new marks in the event of the concerned athletes coming under a cloud at a later date, perhaps on foreign soil.

The federation wants to play fair. K.M. Beenamol’s record in the 400 metres set in Kiev in June will be legitimised without any formalities. In fact the federation cannot question performances recorded on foreign soil and in recognised international competitions. Only those records set during competitions in India will come under scrutiny. The athletes will have to cooperate. It is in their own interest to do so.

Rachita Mistry who has kept Usha’s 100 metres mark under scrutiny, once equalling it and than bettering it, has in fact given cause for comment after her interview in leading national paper in mid-July. In the interview she is recorded as saying that she had been getting a vitamin supplement and receiving injections twice a week. She does not know what those injections are or what is in that powder being supplied by the Ukranian doctor of the Indian athletics team, Dr. Yuriy Boyko.

The injection and the vitamin supplement may be very innocent in intention but the fact that an intelligent girl like Rachita does not know the contents is something difficult to understand. She should have asked and the doctor should have told her without being asked. There could be many interpretations of vitamins and injections. And there will be some pertinent questions too. Was Rachita alone given the vitamins and injections or was it a part of a treatment for the whole team.? Then there is the affect of the vitamins and injections, if any. Were they responsible for the record set by Rachita?

If so then why did the vitamins and injections did not have the same affect on the other athletes? And more importantly is the question whether the All-India Athletics Federation knew about these pills and injections. If Rachita was candid enough with the newspaper reporter she must have also talked about pills and injections and discussed it with other athletes.

Something is certainly wrong somewhere. The federation has a responsibility towards the athletes and should investigate the matter and come out with a statement clearing the air. Indian athletics appears to be going through a very important state and it is only fair that the athletes should not be denied their rightful claim to the records, if they are all “clean”. 

Women w’lifters ‘can go sky-high’
By S. Rifaquat Ali

STOCKILY-BUILT Hungarian weightlifting coach Imre Zsuga was deputed by IOC Solidarity to run a three-week course for selected Indian weightlifting coaches at the NIS, Patiala. He spoke to the writer on various aspects of Indian weightlifting.

The following are excerpts from the interview:

Q: In how many countries you have conducted courses/clinics in weightlifting?

A: Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, North Congo, Brazil, Zaire, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Albania, Malta, Algeria, Lagos, Slovania and a few other countries.

Q: What is the difference in your opinion between the developed and developing countries in terms of weightlifting standard?

A: At present, the top countries in weightlifting are China, Russia, Greece, Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria. Qatar spent $ 3 million on its lifters to train in Bulgaria which is proof enough that even smaller nations are conscious of improving the standard of weightlifting in their countries.

Romania, Spain, the USA, Columbia, Japan, South Africa, Slovakia and so forth are the developing countries in weightlifting. Indian men lifters are weak, while the women lifters are very good and amongst the top six in the world. If the Indian women lifters are trained more systematically and scientifically, they can go sky-high. I am very much impressed by the women lifters in India and the potential is enormous.

Q: What sort of system exists in Hungary to train young lifters for international competitions?

A: Before the Seoul Olympics, there were about 5000 men and women lifters in the age group of 11-12 years. Now the scene has changed. There are now only 500 boys and girls lifters in the 11-12 years age group which is disturbing.

Q: What is your opinion about the Chinese system in weightlifting?

A: The Chinese system, as all know, is very secretive. Not many experts in weightlifting are aware of the fact that the present Chinese weightlifting coach has a diploma in weightlifting from Hungary. He acquired the scientific knowledge in training methodology in weightlifting in Hungary.

Q: You have seen the Indian men and women weightlifting teams in training at the NIS in Patiala. What is your impression about the Indian training system?

A: To me, it is a confused training methodology, in the sense that with the foreign and Indian coaches, it is a mixed training methodology which is not sound. In India, I notice that there is no proper yearly competition calendar, there is no selection method; there is no long-term plan to train the lifters; coaching plans are loose and the coaching level of the Indian coaches is average. The government support to weightlifting is very good: free coaching, free equipment, free kit, free supplements and so on. To be candid enough, the training facilities at the NIS, Patiala, is better than a top country like Romania.

Q: Do you think there is enough scientific back up to the training plan in weightlifting in India?

A: Not at all. There should be day-to-day monitoring of the training. Each day, new things should be put in practice. The testing in physiology once in six weeks is absolutely necessary.

Q: What do you suggest to uplift weightlifting standards in India?

A: You should develop your local coaching cadre in weightlifting. The diploma course in weightlifting at the NIS ought to be more concrete and pragmatic. In Hungary, we have a four-year diploma course in weightlifting. Secondly, the weightlifting coaches in India must go to all competitions in the country to spot talent. There should be a string of men and women lifters in the national coaching camps as follows: 10 senior and 10 junior lifters in the men’s section; likewise, there should be 10 senior and 10 junior lifters in the women’s section. There should be a second string team in the men’s section as well as in the women’s section.

Business as usual for tarnished Olympics
By Andrew Jennings and Clare Sambrook

MANFRED EWALD, once East-Germany’s most powerful sports official, left a Berlin court this month with a smile on his face and a suspended sentence for feeding male hormones to women athletes without their consent. “A relentless fuhrer”, the judge called Ewald, who ruled his country’s dope programme through four Olympics. Women, who had been children chasing dreams during those times, trailed into the witness box to speak of the liver damage and cancers they had since suffered, their sprouting beards, their miscarriages. One told of giving birth to a baby with deformities.

At 74 years of age, Ewald might seem like a harmless relic of times past. But times past will still live on at this year’s Olympic Games. The 80-year-old Juan Antonio Samaranch, another relentless fuhrer, leader of the Olympic movement, showered Ewald and his leader, Erich Honecker, with the highest Olympic honours and presided for two decades over the sloppiest of doping controls. This autumn Samaranch will declare the Sydney Olympic Games open and graciously accept the world’s applause.

It is hard not to admire Samaranch’s staying power. Just 18 months ago members of his International Olympic Committee stood accused of taking bribes. Some had toured the world selling their votes for sex, cash and medical treatment, to cities bidding to host the games.

In the past when faced with allegations of corruption Samaranch struck out at the accuser — one of us (Andrew Jennings) was given a five-day suspended jail sentence in the Olympic home town of Lausanne eight years ago for publishing the truth about Olympic corruption. But this time the accuser was one of their own: Swiss IOC member and whistleblower, Marc Hodler.

They tried and failed to smear him as a mad old fool, but the documents supported him, box-loads of letters and private memos from Salt Lake City, detailing the Olympians’ colourful demands.

Sponsors who had paid fortunes to harness themselves to a brand that is supposed to embody youth, fair play and idealism were aghast to be linked in the consumer’s mind with old men soliciting legovers and knee replacement surgery. When the corporations threatened to flee, Samaranch reluctantly expelled a few dear friends and promised reform.

Today’s official line is that reform is a success, and Samaranch’s International Olympic Committee is more democratic and accountable, more determined to support athletes and fight doping, than it has ever been before.

In the past, new members were chosen by Samaranch and his Executive Board and rubber-stamped by the membership. After 50 stunning reforms, they tell us, a carefully controlled committee compiles a list of names from which... new members are chosen by Samaranch and his Executive Board and rubber-stamped by the membership.

Having tracked the reform process from the start we can say — but how to put it nicely? — the official line is a big fat lie. Only the other week the US Justice Department published a list of IOC members, some still happily ensconced, who took money from the Salt Lake City bid team.

By far the IOC’s most decisive move in its bribery crisis was the appointment of world-class spin doctors Hill & Knowlton, who have done magnificent work over the years protecting profits when big business inadvertently kills, maims or otherwise upsets the public. They controlled the financial damage after Bhopal, the world’s worst industrial accident, which killed 3,000 people in India; they protected reputations when the Exxon Valdez spilled its poisonous cargo into Prince William Sound; and they have done more than just about anybody to support the view that smoking is not bad for you.

In the first days of the Olympic crisis the damage controllers told their new clients: this is your Bhopal, this is your Exxon Valdez. We know, because someone helpfully sent us parcels of documents, some revealing the spin doctors’ multimillion-dollar advice to their clients, others minuting the Olympians’ own private meetings during the crisis.

Leafing through those papers you could easily forget that the Olympics has anything at all to do with sport. “Seize the news initiative,” Hill & Knowlton urge. They would “strategically place op-ed pieces by IOC ambassadors”. They pledged but failed to deliver Henry Kissinger in the New York Times and Margaret Thatcher in the International Herald Tribune. In the public’s mind, the IOC must be transformed from a “secretive club,” into a “modern, transparent and effective trustee.” The keepers of the Olympic flame speak with palpable fear of the sponsorship stampede and plot “a major restoration programme for the Olympics brand”.

The cost of all this spin — $ 3 million and rising for Hill & Knowlton’s machinations, several million more on a global advertising campaign to restore the brand and who knows what on “communications”, now the IOC’s biggest single area of activity — could have bought an awful lot of footballs for barefoot kids in shanty towns around the world.

Meanwhile, something else deeply worrying has happened in the Olympic world. The mafia has quietly taken root. Among the Olympics’ attractions to the mob are kudos, opportunities for laundering money and reputations and, best of all, an open door. Victories in sport and sports elections are now traded for cash by eastern European mobsters. A man reputed to be among the top 10 Moscow mafiosi has manoeuvred himself into the hierarchy of Olympic boxing and has been a welcome guest at Lausanne.

The stench that hangs on the Olympics adheres to cities that bid to host the games, to politicians who pay obeisance to President Samaranch and to all the athletes, dopers or not, for how can we tell them apart? But the Olympics can be rescued. This past year’s multi-governmental effort to wrest doping control from the IOC’s jealous grip points the way ahead. An inter-governmental conference on giving the games back to the people would be a start.

— By arrangement with The Guardian

Teeing-off
by K.R. Wadhwaney
Coaching alone will not help

THE Indian golfers, like cricket players and hockey players, are obsessed with technique. They concentrate on developing swing and style. In doing so, they toss about from one coach to another. Many of them seek guidance from foreign coaches, who are paid huge amount for the training they in part.

To possess copybook technique, good swing and style are indeed important. But in international competitions, mental sharpness and calm nerves are much more vital than possessing good technique and an impressive swing.

‘‘Look at your swing and follow through’’, screams a renowned coach at his young pupil who retorts back in saying: ‘‘Never mind my swing and follow through, look at the ball which is on the green’’.

Jyoti Randhawa and Gaurav Ghei were among the 24 Asian PGA players in the qualifying round for the British Open. Ghei, who had qualified for the 1997 Open, failed to strike form but Randhawa did attain it to impress golf pundits. He was one among four from the list of 480 players to qualify for the Open. He was the second Indian to have qualified. The first was Ghei.

In the Open, Randhawa seemed under pressure throughout. Overawed by the occasion, he failed to attain his best form that he had displayed in the qualifying round. He was playing with the same technique that he had displayed in the qualifying round. But his edgy nerves prevented him from achieving the form that he should have shown in the Open.

The Indian golfers’ primary need is to concentrate on developing big-match temperament. No matter how good is their technique and style, they will not be able to perform until they develop mental sharpness. The amount of money that they are spending on coaching should be diverted to golf psychology and physical fitness. Unless they are physically fit and mentally sharp they have little chance of impressing in international competitions.

About two years ago, the Delhi Golf Club established a good health centre. It has many apparatus of developing muscles and strength which help hitting a long ball. The survey shows that the leading local players hardly make use of the centre. Other members are also wary of using it. Maybe, it will be closed shortly. The professional players as also promising amateurs should prevail upon the management to let the centre continue. Maybe, the rules can be suitably amended so that it is not a financial burden. Even if it is, so what?

The club has been known to have misspent on several meaningless ventures. Why scuttle the health unit which can be of immense use to golfers? The management must bear in mind that the game will flourish only if it is conducted for golfers, of golfers and by golfers. The centre may have been a ‘‘brainchild’’ of a member from the opposition but it does not mean that it should not be promoted.

Weight training is an essential part of coaching. All youngsters must be impressed upon to develop their shoulders. Tiger Woods, who achieved completing a career grand slam by winning the British Open untroubled, possesses a very strong pair of shoulders. His strength lay in his hitting a very long ball. He derives this strength from his extraordinary physical fitness. He never gets perturbed or rattled up. He plays his natural game and he annihilates all his opponents. He is a quiet destroyer of reputation of his rivals.

The standards that the 24-year-old Californian has set will be difficult to match. The youngest to complete the slam, he stands on the top, far ahead of his rivals. The established stars, past and present, are of the view that his uniqueness is unmatched. What is most astonishing about this world champion is that he stays modest and friendly without any airs or arrogance.

Similar is the state of mind of the William sisters, Venus and Sarena. Venus claimed the Wimbledon while Sarena bagged the US Open. In addition, the sisters also bagged the Wimbledon doubles title.

The achievement of these stars is because of their temperament and fitness. The Indian golfers must try to emulate them and make use of fitness centres more often than they have been. Coaching alone will not help them win major titles abroad.

SPORT MAIL

Kudos to Lanka for title win

Sanath Jayasuriya, captain of the Sri Lankan team, and his team-mates deserve congratulations for winning the triangular Singer Cup. They beat strong contenders South Africa by 40 runs. The Sri Lankan batsmen smashed their way to a formidable 294 for 7 in 50 overs. Jayasuriya alone contributed 68 runs. For the first wicket they made 84 in just 12 overs. Wicketkeeper Sangakkara is a fine discovery. He is proving to be a good batsman.

SUBHASH C. TANEJA
Rohtak

Match-fixing

As we all know the match-fixing scandal has shaken the cricketing world and obviously has affected all those who are connected with the game. At this moment everyone is feeling betrayed as some of our own players may be guilty of being involved in match-fixing. Therefore, in order to make the game free from such things and to restore the lost reputation of the game some tough measures have to be taken by the International Cricket Council (ICC). The ICC should act immediately to make it obligatory that no country should play more than 25 one dayers and 15 Test matches in a calendar year. By reducing the number of matches, match-fixing can be reduced considerably. Although the functioning of every cricket board is different but still they can frame some uniform laws to stop match-fixing. Every cricket board should instruct its players to furnish details about their wealth and sources of income. Secondly, no player should be allowed to use mobile phones while playing any international match.

UMESH DEWAN
Ludhiana

P.T. Usha

P.T. Usha has never been bestowed the title of “flying queen” as reported by the media. On the contrary “Flying Sikh” Milkha Singh earned this title through some spectacular feats, including the athletic meet at Lahore where he beat Pakistan star athlete Abdul Khaliq by a distance of 10 metres in 200 metres. The public at that time was thrilled to see him running so fast. The former President of Pakistan, General Ayub Khan, and the vast majority of people of Lahore bestowed the title of “Flying Sikh” on Milkha Singh.

NARINDER 
Chandigarh

Pierce shines

June 10, 2000 was a red-letter day for French tennis star Mary Pierce who become only the second female French player to win the French Open title. In 1967, it was Francoise Durr, who had won this title for France. Heartiest congratulations to Pierce for achieving this glorious feat. Mary beat Conchita Martinez of Spain 6-2, 7-5. She gave a brilliant performance throughout the tournament. This remarkable title win is the second Grand Slam win for Mary. She last won the Australian Open in 1995. Mary Pierce really deserves a standing ovation for her marvellous performance. Mary’s career can be a source of inspiration for the youngsters. After giving on outstanding performance in 1993, she was seeded third in the world. But in 1994, due to some family problems, she was unable to concentrate on the game and lost match after match. As a result she was not in the top 10 list at the end 1994. But Mary did not lose heart and continued to work hard. She won her first grand slam title in 1995. She jumped again into the top 10 group.

RAJDEEP SINGH
Phagwara