NEW DELHI: The Sports Authority of India feels that after a year of sustained coaching and training there has been a marked improvement in the level of the performance of sportsmen.
- Chatterjee, DirectorGeneral of the Sports Authority of India, told newsmen that “Operation excellence” launched by SAI had definitely shown results.
Asumof over Rs3 crore had been spent on this programme, On athletics alone about Rs 73 lakh had been spent.
On the policy of inviting foreign coaches, Chatterjee said that preference was being given to invite coaches under cultural exchange programmes because the services ‘of coaches were otherwise too expensive.
Giving an example, he said that for having the services of a football coach from Hungary we had to pay about $7,000 per month as against $1,000 to a Soviet Union coach who came on a cultural exchange basis.
SAI is going ahead for finalizing a contract for training the hockey team with Klaus Klieter of West Germany or B. Bellart from Holland.
Cedric D’Souza who trained the triumphant Bombay team in the National Hockey Championship at Gwalior has been included in the panel of coaches to train the national team. Chatterjee said that the two foreign coaches considered for the Indian team were currently training their respective national teams for the 1990 World Cup and were likely to be free thereafter.
National Coach M:P. Ganesh would also receive a helping hand from Balkishan Singh, Bhaskaran, Sommaiyya and Dr. V. Paes, They might be asked to offer their services from 10 to 15 days at the camp every month,
Mr. Chatterjee felt that two national records and seven meet records broken at the recent athletics meeting Madras was a pointer to the fact that the training had paid dividends.
SAI had expressed satisfaction that the performance of about 20 athletes was better than their previous best and that they were within the bronze medal winning standards of the last Asian Games.
Archery was another discipline where the performances were rated as praise worthy, A coaching camp for 12 archers ‘was at present in progress at the Indira Gandhi stadium here under the supervision of Soviet coach Alexander Hikolaey, SanJeev Singh, Shyam Lal, Limba Ram andS. Dorje were all reported to have had significant improvements and were medal prospects for the Asian Games.
At the recent SAARC championships Indian judokas won 15 out of 17 gold medals. In the previous SAARC championships they had been unable to win even a single gold. The judo camp was held in Bangalore from April 89 under national coach R.W. Patil with close involvement of two Soviet experts,
In volleyball India finished fifth in the previous Asian Championship at Kuwait and was ranked behind China, Japan, South Korea and Kuwait. Sustained coaching during the past one year bad led to around improvement and the national team beat Asian Games gold medalists China in the Four Nation Tournament held last month in Japan.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 29, 1989
