Sport - Athletics

Intense competition within the Indian team

— Photo: Vipin Chandran

WARMING UP: Chitra and Manjeet Kaur practise ahead of the South Asian athletics championship in Kochi on Tuesday.

KOCHI: Relays in athletics are all about teamwork, about perfect timing, about the fluent passing of the baton and about cheering teammates, to push them harder.

“We’re very united, we’re good friends and we’ve been doing well too,” says Chitra Soman, the Asian 400m champion who anchored India to the mile relay gold in last year’s Asian Championship in Jordan and at last month’s Asian indoor meet in Qatar.

“Our team has virtually been a Kerala-Punjab combination at recent international meets,” chips in Manjeet Kaur, the country’s fastest one-lapper, who led India to a stunning Asian Games relay gold in Doha in 2006. “We do a lot of talking, discuss a lot of things. And I can understand a bit of Malayalam though I can’t speak your language.”

Still, behind the united front which we witness during action-packed relays, there is an intense rivalry within the Indian team.

“When we run the individual 400m, it’s each girl for herself. We don’t even talk to each other before the race,” says the Kerala-born Chitra. “But after the race, after everything has sunk in, we point out the strong and weak points.”

It was this intense rivalry which pushed Manjeet to the 400m National record at the inter-State meet in Chennai four years ago.

“Chitra was chasing me all the way, I had to run for my life,” said Manjeet. They were running hard for they were running for Olympic berths for the Athens Games. That run, Manjeet’s 51.05 secs and Chitra’s 51.30, still remains their personal best. A little later, at the 2004 Olympics, the Indian quartet of Chitra, Rajwinder, K.M. Beenamol and Manjeet — ran to a National record 3:26.89 secs. India finished seventh in the final.

The battle for the relay team berths could once again turn out to be very bitter over the next couple of months even as the country fights to qualify for this August’s Beijing Olympics. Only the best 16 countries can make it to Beijing.

Chitra, who won five golds at the Bangalore Junior National seven years ago and who still holds the under-18 girls National 100 and 200m records, is in fine nick this season with the young Mandeep Kaur pushing her hard.

Meanwhile, Manjeet failed to figure among the medals at the recent Federation Cup at Bhopal with Andhra Pradesh’s S. Geetha taking the bronze.

The 400m and relay battles sure promise to be very interesting at the South Asian Championship which begins at the Maharaja’s Stadium here on Friday.

There is a plan to have two Indian relay teams at the Kochi event. The more the merrier.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu