ATHLETICS | AFI hopes for better show in Commonwealth and Asian Games

The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) is banking on its structural modifications to hope that the nation’s athletes would return better outcomes in the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games subsequent yr.

“We are doing a lot of new things. We are absolutely confident that we will do far better at the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games than we did the last time…in terms of individual performances, timings, records, as well as the number of medals. We keep building blocks one by one. We believe that small improvements are the best improvements,” stated AFI spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla on Sunday.

The AFI think-tank is considering whether or not to let athletes go step-by-step to greater occasions.

“Whether the World championships is somewhere we want to expose everybody or bring them through Asian championships, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games… anybody who qualifies like (getting) 50th out of 50 or 56th out of 56th (rankings), then it’s quite demoralising because if you’re the last person to qualify, then you’ll probably be among the last few to finish. That could be a big hit to your confidence for the future.

“A very strong internal discussion is going on whether we should only let those guys who qualify go, or maybe we keep a qualifying standard at 50 per cent of the rankings.”

Sumariwalla identified that old school coaches used to “under-train” and “save” athletes, together with quarter-milers who wanted to run a number of races however who finally turned out to be “one race athletes,” resulting in “load issue.”