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1/12/2010
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SPORT ‘I lost my sight, not vision’ Sherine Paul. MUMBAI When he was 12, Henry Wanyoike decided that he would be a runner. The Kenyan lost his eyesight due to illness seven years later but did not let anything come in the way of his goal. The Paralympic gold medalist, world track champion and nominee of the prestigious Laureus Sports Award, kept his promise. Wanyoike, who is here to compete in the half-marathon, recalled the day he lost his sight. “It was in April, 1995. I suffered a stroke which paralysed the left side of my body. I was just 19 then. It was a HEROES: Henry huge shock and Wanyoike (centre) a major setand Joseph Skibunja back,” he said. Despite the odds, he decided to follow his dream. “There was no support from my family. I lost many friends too. We did not have enough money for a surgery. But I was determined to fight.” Together with his guide and childhood friend Joseph Kibunja, Wanyoike overcame his fears and started training so that he could run again. Joseph, who was a carpenter, now accompanies Henry as his guide in marathons. “I feel really fortunate to have become a runner as I never knew that I had that talent in me,” he said. The duo hopes to complete the halfmarathon course in 1 hr 20 min. The Kenyan athlete shared some tips and had a training session with a few young women from the Hamara Foundation at the University Pavilion in Marine Lines on Tuesday. Wanyoike signed off by saying: “Self confidence is a big factor. One should believe in oneself. If you keep your focus right then nothing is impossible.”
indiawatch Sports fest for law colleges National Law School of India University will conduct their annual sports festival ‘Spiritus 2009-2010’ from January 15 to 17. The events will be held at NLSIU and the neighbouring Sports Authority of India campuses. Around 700 students from 30 law colleges from Bangalore and other parts of the country are expected to participate. The events to be conducted are basketball, carrom, football, chess, badminton and table tennis.
Women’s deaf sports c’ship The 3rd National Deaf Women’s Sports Championship will be held from January 28 to February 1 at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore. Till now, 18 states have confirmed participation and around 600 athletes are expected to participate. For details and contributions, contact organising secretary TV Manohar (ph: 9243085916, email: manohar_tv99@yahoo.co.in)
Yuki takes on Minar India’s teen sensation Yuki Bhambri has entered the Australian Open men’s qualifiers and he takes on Czech Jan Minar in the first round of his maiden Grand Slam event on Wednesday. As a junior Australian Open champion last year, Yuki, 17, is entitled to a wild card entry in the qualifying rounds this year, but he made the cut on his own with his improved ranking of 330. Minar, who is 11 years Yuki’s senior, is ranked 245. Also in the qualifying race is Somdev Devvarman, who is seeded 27th in the draw. Somdev opens against 17year-old Australian James Duckworth. Prakash Amritraj, ranked 200, plays in the first round German Andre Begemann, ranked 231. The Australian Open begins Monday at Melbourne Park.
Bangalore, Wednesday, January 13, 2010
It is a never-ending story in Indian hockey. The revolt by the players in the camp at Pune shows just how much they are fed up with the way the governing body operates. Be it the erstwhile Indian Hockey Federation or Hockey India (HI), concern for players is virtually non-existent. Such instances are not new in the history of Indian hockey. Over the years, players have demanded some kind of monthly salary or remuneration that will help them survive in case they do not have regular jobs. While in pre-independence times, it was just passion and pride that drove these men. But times have changed and passion does not fill stomachs. That is something people need to understand. If they do not, it leads to revolts and protests. “This is not the first time such a thing has happened,” said Olympian MP Ganesh, also former Indian captain and coach. He retired as the Executive Director (teams) of Sports Authority of India. “What they are asking is genuine. What is due to them needs to be given to them.” Former Indian goalkeeper and Olympian Ashish Ballal also felt that the players are getting a raw deal. “I support the players fully. This is not social service. There are some players who are not employed. Will they be worried about the country or their next meal?” he questioned. “The frustration was
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From the school of hard knocks A VEERAMANI
K Rajkumar, who won a gold medal at last week’s South Zone championship, was raised in a Viveknagar slum Dev S Sukumar. BANGALORE It’s over seven years since K Rajkumar shifted his home from the urban slum of Swarnahalli in Viveknagar. On Monday, he briefly returned to walk the streets of his childhood. Things haven’t changed much – many of the homes are flimsy huts of bricks and mud, with open drains running in front – but some of the older tenements have been demolished for newer buildings. People stop to chat him up. He’s a hawaldar with the army now, one of the few from the place who made it to a better life. When the 25-year-old won the bantamweight gold medal at the South Zone Boxing Championships last week, it underlined a recurring theme: that in boxing, champions are born out of poverty. Rajkumar’s is a story that has been played out in starker detail, and on the world stage, by several others – Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson. In Bangalore, its low income settlements, in areas such as Cox Town, Austin Town and Murphy Town, have long been recognised as a nursery for footballers – but their contribution to boxing has not been widely acknowledged. Rajkumar’s is not a unique tale; it only reinforces the stereotype. Like his idol Mike Tyson, Rajkumar was a problem kid. A friend he grew up with, one of the many who roamed the streets and picked up fights, was murdered by a rival gang not long ago. Others are still drifters. “Boxing saved me,” he says, with a slight lisp, the result of some missing teeth. “If not for boxing, I don’t know where I’d have been. Probably in jail.” “My father was a watchman. I had four elder sisters and a brother, and it wasn’t easy. I used to wander around and pick up fights. I would be first in for any fight. One day a man stopped me and told me: ‘So you want to fight? Come with me, I’ll show you how.’” The man was Sports Authority of India coach J Sreedharan, who lived in the neighbourhood. Rajkumar had seen him do yoga on his terrace every morning; but he brushed him aside and went his way. Soon after, having
TOTAL RECALL: Rajkumar, pictured at the neighbourhood he grew up in. Boxing provided an escape from the dangers of growing up as a street thug bunked class, he noticed that Sreedharan had come to his school to recruit boys for boxing. Asked if he was interested, the young boy, who trusted his street fighting skills, put his hand up. The batch of 22 was taken to Bangalore Military School, and asked to spar. “The coach was looking for character,” says Rajkumar. “I beat up one boy and he started bleeding. I was shortlisted along with seven others.” Sreedharan trained the group for a month. Many of the boys dropped out; out of the 22, there were just four left. Sreedharan would pay them money for food. At the state championships, Rajkumar won the sub-junior silver medal and was selected for the SAI boxing scheme that assured him board and lodging. His boxing career took off from there – while he wouldn’t quite attain the level of India’s better-known box-
ers, such as Jitender Kumar or Suranjoy Singh, Rajkumar won the state championships five years in a row and the South Zone thrice. At the national championships he won a bronze, and that helped him get a call-up from the army’s Madras Engineering Group (MEG) in Bangalore. It hasn’t been a spectacular career, but the job with MEG has helped him marry off his elder sisters and push his family up from the slum of Swarnahalli. “I’m very different now,” he says. “My friend-circle has changed. MEG has a good programme for boxers. I train even when I go home once a week. “I didn’t know my talent. It was Sreedharan who discovered it. He showed me there could be a good life in boxing.” And what of Sreedharan himself ? He lies nearly immobile, from a stroke he had three years
ago, in an asbestos-roofed tenement not far from where Rajkumar lives. It’s a tragic story – but the upshot is this: he’s bed-ridden, unable to speak or move, able only to move his left hand. Tending to him is his 83-year-old mother, who struggles to make ends meet with her late husband’s pension. Sreedharan is a third of his former size; he still smiles, but he bears no resemblance to the hulking boxer of his youth. Some of the boxing disciples come by sometimes, as do his five siblings, but for the most part, he lives on memories. He smiles when reminded of Rajkumar, or the other boxers he helped raise – Sudhakar Rao, Dhiraj Singh, Vinod Kumar, Parveez Ahmed. “Sreedharan gave me a life,” Rajkumar says, “If not for him I would still have been roaming these streets.”
‘Woods’ absence will hurt golf’ Jeev Milkha Singh feels world No.1 may return after three months C Rajshekhar Rao. NEW DELHI
Jeev Milkha Singh
Indian golf star Jeev Milkha Singh feels Tiger Woods’s absence from the professional circuit will hit the game very badly. “I feel Woods will be out for around three months or so. I am sure the television ratings will take a severe beating during that time,” the 38-year-old said on the sidelines of a function here to announce his appointment as brand ambassador of the Call-
away golf company. “But I am sure the ratings will improve once he is back on the circuit. That is what Woods means to the game,” Jeev added. On the Royal Trophy that Asia lost to Europe a few days ago, Jeev said the contest was thrilling. “It was obviously disappointing to lose but we could not have asked for more. It ultimately went down to the wire and that is good for the game,” said Jeev, who is the highest-ranked Indian in the world at 50. “Gaganjeet (Bhullar) was a little nervous, which is quite understandable considering that he is just 21. But he has a lot of potential and will do a lot more
in the future,” he said about his compatriot and teammate in that event. Jeev feels there is a great scope for the growth of golf in India provided there are affordable facilities. “There is just one public golf range in the country and probably just one public driving range. The day we have driving ranges that everybody can use — at some Rs50 per 100 balls or so — the game will grow in the country. With a population of over one billion, who knows there could be a champion out there,” Jeev said. “Golf is the fastest growing game in the country and now that it is in the Olympics, it is fantastic news for all of us.”
Give them their due, say former players Vivek Phadnis. BANGALORE
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there and it has now reached boiling point.” “Even when we were playing, officials did not care. There was a risk and threat of being dropped from the team if we protested. “There is no accountability in the National governing body,” he added. Ballal also raised an interesting point. “It is shocking to see that no corporate body has come forward to help the players out,” he said. What the game has lacked is a professional approach, paid office bearers who can be held accountable for their actions. When the Indian Hockey Federation was removed, an ad-hoc body constituted and Hockey India coming into existence subsequently, there was hope among hockey players, present and former, that something would change. But the change does not seem to have happened for the better. To add to the complication is pressure from the International Hockey Federation (FIH that has been pressing HI to conduct elections. For elections, the merger of the men’s and women’s associations and affiliation of all state associations have to be completed. And the World Cup is to be held in New Delhi in February/ March for which preparations have to be made. All these factors have only made life tougher for the administrators. To deal with things, Ganesh feels there should be a system in place. “They should have a calendar and get approval from the Sports Ministry,” Ganesh, currently the CEO of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, said. “The system should be there to run the
OVER THE MOON: With World Cup preparations taking a hit due to the payment controversy, Indian hockey might not witness joyous scenes such as this affairs of the federation. Just look at the BCCI. There has been no system in hockey from the beginning.” The core group players in Indian hockey revolting just before the
country is hosting the World Cup is indeed a shameful scenario. With India not among the best teams in the world, the faster this is resolved, the better will it be.
DEV S SUKUMAR
Plucky Gopal pulls off unlikely win Helps India retain third spot by beating Egypt with last-gasp victory Bursa: India registered a lucky victory over Egypt in a closely-fought encounter to hold on to their joint third spot at the end of the seventh round of the World Team Chess Championships. Grandmaster G N Gopal scored a rabbit-out-of-hat victory against Abdel Razek Khaled just when a draw looked inevitable to guide India to an improbable 2.5-1.5 win after the other three games were drawn. Gopal became the hero of the day from Indian perspective, especially because the game was only a few of moves away from being declared drawn when the Turkish International Master landed himself in a lost position. It was a Rook and Bishop v/s Rook endgame wherein 47 moves were already played by both players; after 50 moves such a game would have been declared drawn. But Gopal kept trying and caught his complacent opponent offguard in one of the known traps. The United States continued with their fine run and emerged as the sole leader on 12 points following a 2.5-1.5 victory over Greece. For the US, yet again, Hikaru Nakamura scored an important victory on the top board against Vasilios Kotronias. In other games of the day, Russia played out a 2-2 draw with Armenia while Azerbaijan drubbed Brazil 3.5-0.5. United States is on top with 12 points, followed by Russia on 11. Azerbaijan and India share the third spot on nine points with two more rounds to go. Armenia is sole fifth on eight points, a full point adrift
of Israel who have a point more than Greece. Turkey and Egypt share the eighth spot on three points each and Brazil occupies the last spot with just two points. True to his style, Sasikiran fought hard to try and open an early lead. Adly, the 2007 World Junior champion, made slow but steady progress with his white pieces. In the late middle game, Sasikiran sacrificed a rook for knight to get some compensation and his opponent returned it when the danger became imminent. The Indian’s hope vanished in the ensuing endgame that was drawn after 80 moves. In the next encounter, Harikrishna’s white pieces did not yield the desired result for him as Amin Baseem neutralised his initiative fairly quickly. Harikrishna’s form here has been a cause for concern for the think tank and against Baseem, a player rated more than 150 points below him, the Indian was held to an easy draw. On the fourth board, National Champion B Adhiban was also held to a draw by Sarwat Walaa after 48 moves.
Results round 7 Russia drew with Armenia 2-2 Egypt lost to India 1.5-2.5 (Adly Ahmed drew with Krishnan Sasikiran P Harikrishna drew with Amin Bassem Abdel Razik Khaled lost to G N Gopal B Adhiban drew with Sarwat Walaa) Israel lost to Turkey 1.5-2.5; Brazil lost to Azerbaijan 0.5-3.5 Greece lost to United Stated 1.5-2.5