The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : ‘Athlete is the main actor on the field’

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 08, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Sport

Sport - Athletics

‘Athlete is the main actor on the field’

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: “The main actor on the field is the athlete, not the coach. In sport, a good coach does not instruct but stimulates the athlete to think for himself and solve the problems,” said Horst Wein, the Master coach of the International Hockey Federation (FIH).

Stressing the importance of developing game intelligence, in the International Sports Medicine Conference at the Scope Complex, the versatile coach who has done coaching assignments in five Olympic disciplines in 53 countries, emphasised that it was more important to have game intelligence so that the athletes could respond to situations in a fraction of a second and come to the right decisions, than having physical ability, technique and tactical knowledge.

“Considering the way you handle the traffic every day when you are riding a bike or driving a car, I am sure the Indians have the ability to respond to situations very quickly and execute perfectly,” he said.

Citing the example of India winning six gold medals in hockey in the Olympics over the years, Horst Wein said that the Indian teams in the past were able to excel because of superior technique, but the game had progressed beyond that phase.

Technique important

“Technique is always important, but giving top performance is much more than technique. You have to get away from technique oriented coaching to excel in team games,” he said.

“Playing without thinking, is like shooting without aiming,” he observed.

The author of 34 books mainly on hockey and football, Horst Wein, said that when the coaches made the athletes think for themselves and solve the problems, the knowledge stayed in the athlete for ever.

“When you are coaching the youth, you should give problems to the players, not solutions. A good coach helps his player to understand what he likes him to discover,” he said, adding that stimulation was done through questioning.

“Let the athletes think, instead of you thinking for them. We are selling blinkers to our players, limiting their vision. Coaching is not a monologue, it is a dialogue,” he said.

On doping

Another interesting topic of the day was about new challenges of detection of doping in sport, by Dr. Geoffrey Goldspink, Professor Emeritus, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London.

Taking a dig at the trends in doping, Dr. Goldspink said that the Olympic Games were being known not only for the cities that host them, but also on the lines of the prevalent doping in that period. “We have had for example, the beta agonist, the EPO, the steroid Games etc. The next Games may be called ‘gene modification games’, based on the interest being shown at the moment on the subject,” he said.

The conference was inaugurated by the Chairman of the Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games, Suresh Kalmadi, on Friday.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport