40 athletes ready to shift base to Poland for 3 months

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 7

The Indian athletes are gearing up to head to Spala in central Poland for a three-month long training-cum-competition stint in their bid to qualify for the Rio Olympics.

A total of 40 core probables will set up their base in Spala’s Olympics Training Centre from May 9 to August 4 before leaving for Rio de Janeiro. During this period, they will participate in various competitions across Europe.

The group of athletes includes both the men and women in the 400m, 400m hurdles and 4x400m relays, seven javelin throwers and the race walkers who have already qualified for Rio in the men’s and women’s 20km and men’s 50km, respectively.

While the 400m athletes and javelin throwers will leave for Spala on Monday, the race walkers will join them soon after participating in the IAAF Race Walk World Championships on May 7-8 in Rome. 

The athletes will be accompanied by their coaches and support staff and the entire cost of the tour will be borne by the Sports Ministry.

Spala was zeroed in on by the athletes themselves, keeping in mind the weather conditions and training facilities at the high-performance centre. The Rio-bound Polish athletics team will train alongside the Indian athletes.

The athletes were of the view that by training in Spala, they would be able to save a lot of travelling time while participating in qualification tournaments across Europe. The Spala centre, one of the most modern sports centres across Europe, is a favourite training base for national teams from across the world.

“Spala’s climate is perfect. It will also save a lot of travel time for the relay teams and javelin throwers as Spala is centrally located. The race walkers have already qualified and they can spend the three months training,” Athletics Federation of India (AFI) secretary CK Valson said.

The training stint will be important for the 4x400m women’s relay team, which is currently ranked 17th in the world. Only the top-16 teams will qualify for the Games based on their average timings recorded between January 1, 2015 and July 11, 2016 at international championships.

Presently, the relay team averages 3 minutes, 31.34 seconds. MR Poovamma, Ashwini Akkunji, Priyanka Pawar, Jauna Murmu, Sini Jose, Debashree Majumdar, Chhavi Sharawat, Anju Thomas, Anu Raghavan and Anilda Thomas will look to make the cut for Rio.

Meanwhile, Valson said that the AFI has already earmarked a number of qualifiers in the coming months for the athletes who are not going to Spala. 

“The long and triple jumpers, men’s and women’s 100m relay teams, shot putters and discus throwers will participate in the IAAF World Challenge in Beijing on May 18, Taiwan Open Athletics Championships on May 19-20, Kazakhstan Open Invitational Meet on June 23 and another qualifying event in Kyrgyzstan. There will be two qualifiers in Turkey also. So, we are working towards providing as many qualifying opportunities to our athletes as possible,” Valson added.