Date confuses athletes
They say one person’s loss is another person’s gain but what if the loser and the beneficiary are the same? Such is the dilemma the state has been put into when the national school athletics in Ludhiana and national cross country championship in Pune overlap.
Not many doubting Thomases will deny that Kerala has a strong history in long distance running, a discipline that fetches more medals to the state than any other track and field activity.
As the national schools event is a prestige issue and defending the title means a lot, a few medal prospects in cross country are in Ludhiana, instead of taking their train to Pune. Isn’t that an unlucky coincidence for the state?
“It certainly is. We never expected both the championships would overlap. Initially, the cross country was scheduled for January 8 and the schools athletics was expected in Ranchi on 10,” said state athletic association secretary M. Velayudhan Kutty.
“We requested the Athletics Federation of India to shift the cross country event and they accepted it by fixing 22 as the date. Then suddenly, the venue for the schools athletics was changed to Ludhiana and the date got changed too — this landed us in the same situation again,” Kutty added.
Meanwhile, the state managed to get a 40-member contingent for the cross country event in an effort — which does not seem possible without its main athletes — to get back the overall title it won in Delhi in 2010.
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