Date:31/07/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/31/stories/2008073157321800.htm

Sport - Athletics

Sprint Academy in Tvm

KOLLAM: National athletics coach Olympian Suresh Babu has said that the Kerala State Sports Council has approved a proposal from the Athletics Federation of India to start a sprint academy at Thiruvananthapuram.

He was talking to media persons along with the Kerala State Sports Commission chairman, A.K. Pandya after a sitting of the commission here on Wednesday.

The academy will stress on providing training in the sprint events. A foreign coach will be brought to the academy for the purpose, he said.

Kerala athletes

Athletes from Kerala are found to excel in the sprint events, especially 400m. Hence the proposal for such an academy, he said.

Suresh Babu said that the Sports Authority of India has agreed to provide funds for developing the High Altitude training centre at Munnar into an institute on par with international training standards.

He said that the recent training provided to the country’s athletic team for the Beijing Olympic at Munnar was very fruitful. All the athletes showed tremendous performance at high altitude.

Olympic disciplines

Mr. Pandya said that since the game of cricket is in a happy state of affairs in the country and since there is a huge corporate sponsorship for football, the commission will concentrate on Olympic disciplines.

Recommendations will be made in the direction of trying to take India from the current fourth position to the second position in the 2010 Commonwealth games.

Therefore, stress will be on creating infrastructure that is not available today and at the same time enabling the utilization of existing infrastructure for more than three hundred days a year. The whole intention is also to market the sport of athletics. For the purpose all associations of sports disciplines will also have to do some hard thinking for marketing their respective discipline.