‘Chinese sizzler’, exclaimed an excited athletics buff on his Facebook page as news poured in that China’s Su Bingtian had become the first Asian-born athlete to break the 10-second barrier in the 100m on Saturday night.
The 25-year-old Asian champion had clocked 9.99s while winning the bronze in the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Eugene, USA, blazing a trail for Asian sprinters.
Well, how long will India have to wait for a sub-10 sprinter of its own? Is there anyone around now who shows promise?
What is stopping a country that has produced stars like Lavy Pinto, a 100m and 200m semifinalist at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, or Milkha Singh who narrowly missed the 400m bronze at the Rome Olympics eight years later?
Difficult task“It is very, very difficult for an Indian to go below 10 seconds,” Milkha, a multiple Asian Games champion in the 200m and 400m, tells The Hindu over telephone from Chandigarh.
“They should train the way I used to. Nobody is doing that. Even coaches are not sincere.
“I still remember running the 100m in 10.4 secs at the 1960 National Games in New Delhi; they find it difficult to do that sort of timing even now.”
“Those days, we were very good in the 100m. We had Lavy Pinto, who was the fastest man at the first Asian Games (in New Delhi, 1951). Lavy used to run in 10.6-10.7 then. He ran with me at the Patiala Nationals, I think, in 1955-56.”
Even going abroad for training will not help, the ‘Flying Sikh’ says.
“There is no question of going abroad. If you are not going to work hard, what is the use of going there?” he asks.
While Milkha reckons the current bunch does not work hard enough, Ramasamy Gnanasekharan, the last Indian male to win a 100m medal at the Asian Games (a silver in Bangkok, 1978), feels that Indians lack the natural talent for short sprints.
“Indians are nowhere in sight. We cannot even reach the Asian Games final now. We don’t have natural talent, and that’s the hard fact,” said Gnanasekharan, also the 200m gold medallist at the 1978 Bangkok Asiad, from Chennai.
“If you look at the Asian Games, only three or four Indians have won 100m medals there. I don’t think an Indian will go below 10 in the next five or 10 years. There is nobody in sight now. Even juniors are coming up very well internationally, they are running very fast. But I don’t see that in India, I’ve been watching the juniors closely, I don’t see much promise.”
The 100m is an event dominated by athletes of African descent. And even Su Bingtian, who trains in the US, will not get the Asian record despite running 9.99s.
Femi Ogunode, a Nigerian who moved to Qatar in 2009, holds the Asian record of 9.93 which came while winning the Asian Games gold in Incheon last year.
It was Samuel Francis, another Qatari of Nigerian origin, who brought the Asian record under 10 secs for the first time while winning the Asian championship gold in Amman in 2007.
Gnanasekharan feels that Asians often suffer a blackout even before the gun goes off for the 100m in major international meets.
“When they compete with Usain Bolt or other top sprinters, they will go down psychologically, they will be mentally down.
“It’s a very different world out there,” said Gnanasekharan, who now resides in Perambur in Chennai and plans to start an athletics academy soon.
“Even this Chinese boy who went below 10s should show some consistency. Only then will I be convinced about his performance.”
Quality coachingWhile Milkha and Gnanasekharan paint a gloomy picture, Kerala’s 100m National record holder Anil Kumar, who came closest to the milestone with a 10.21s in Bengaluru in 2000, feels that quality international coaching could do the trick.
“When I won the Asian silver, the man who won the gold, Saudi Arabia’s Jamal al-Saffar, was training with the Americans. Had they sent me to the US around that time, I would have surely gone below 10,” says Anil, the last Indian to win a 100m medal at the Asian championship (a silver in Jakarta, 2000).
Anil, an SAI coach now, holds the current National record at 10.30s which came in New Delhi in 2005; his 10.21 in Bengaluru was not ratified by the Athletics Federation of India for want of dope control at that meet. He had trained in Ukraine during some his best years.
“I was so confident after that Asian medal, I even told officials that if I did not go below 10 secs after American training, I would reimburse all the money they would spend on me. But it didn’t work,” he says.
“If you give Indians quality training, they can go below 10s,” says Anil.
