Without proper infrastructure, equipment and facilities, the future looks really challenging for the athletic community of Andhra Pradesh, feel the administrators after the Andhra Pradesh Athletic Association (APAA) was split into two bodies recently.
The APAA was formed with 13 districts as its jurisdiction in which Visakhapatnam’s D. Nageswara Rao and Krishna’s D. Raghavendra were elected as president and secretary respectively.
Without synthetic tracks, international equipment and academies; high-level training is a distant dream for the athletes of the 13 districts of residuary Andhra Pradesh.
“All these years we have been training at Gachibowli at Hyderabad. Now the stadium belongs to the Telangana Athletic Association. We are at the mercy of the TAA administrators,” said secretary V. Raghavendra.
“We have an uphill task ahead of us. We need 400-metre synthetic tracks at Vizag, Vijayawada and Anantapur,” he said.
Mr. Raghavendra says coaches need to be appointed by both the State and Central Governments. “In 13 districts we have only six coaches. All the academies are based in Telangana region. We literally need to start from scratch.”
Senior Sports Authority of India coach D.N.V. Vinayak Prasad, who was appointed chief coach of APAA, said practice on a synthetic track is a must for short-distance events.
Mr. Prasad hoped that the junior Nationals, which will be held in Vijayawada in October, would be the right occasion to get the much-needed synthetic track. Administrators are also looking up to industrialist Potluri Varaprasad, who has taken up the assignment of chairman of APAA, for some constructive steps.
Mr. Varaprasad, who left for U.S.A. soon after the meeting, expressed his willingness to lead the athletes from the front and assured all help to spruce up necessary infrastructure.
Incidentally, Mr. Prasad is the owner of Hyderabad Hotshots one of the six franchisees of Indian Badminton League and the co-owner of Kerala Blasters, one of the eight teams of Indian Super League along with cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar.
