Sport - Athletics

Usha’s request

KOCHI: It has got Kerala’s champion school in athletics in St George, Kothamangalam. And the country’s champion university, Mahatma Gandhi, is about an hour’s drive away.

Ernakulam’s first synthetic athletic track will be inaugurated by Chief Minister V.S.Achuthanandan at the Maharaja’s College Stadium here on Thursday evening. The opening will mark the end of a 20-year wait for the State’s second synthetic track.

“After producing so many top-class athletes, I didn’t think it would take two decades to have our second track. Still, am very happy that it has finally happened,” said P.T. Usha, the country’s finest woman athlete.

Usha, however, will miss the track’s maiden evening. “I’m in Mumbai for the Atomic Energy Education Council’s governing body meeting. I’m a member of the body and I had planned the trip nearly a month ago,” she said.

“I have a small request,” said Usha. “I just hope the track is not closed to promising athletes like it happened at University Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram during the early years of Kerala’s first synthetic track there. And care should be taken to maintain the Kochi track well. We should take care not to hold public functions there.”

A torch relay by some of the State’s top sportspersons, starting from the Ernakulam Town Hall, and a seminar on sports development in Kerala at the Regional Sports Centre (starting at 11 a.m.) are some of the events arranged in connection with the track’s inauguration. — Principal Correspondent

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