CHENNAI : After the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) had announced the qualifying standards for the Commonwealth Games, a few coaches and athletes had complained. “These standards are tougher than at Olympic-level,” a few coaches had said then. They can rejoice now. AFI’s qualifying guidelines for the Asian Games, announced on Sunday, are significantly lower. Here are a few examples (refer to table). Any men’s 10000m hopeful will need to clock a time of 29:10.00 to book a ticket to Jakarta. The qualifying mark for CWG was set at 28:00.00. The men’s 1500m time has been set at 3:45.00. It was 3:39.50 at CWG.
AFI secretary CK Valson says this has been done keeping in mind the level of competition at the Asian Games. “These guidelines have been framed for the Asian Games,” Valson explained. “The Asian Games standards are slightly lesser when compared to the CWG (as far as athletics is concerned). That is the reason why we have relaxed it.”
Valson has a point. Jinson Johnson, who clocked 3:37.86 (a national record) in the final of the men’s 1500m at Gold Coast, finished only fifth. That same time would have given Johnson gold at every previous edition of the Asian Games except in 2010. Even otherwise, the Asiad has been a happy hunting ground for Indian athletics. They have picked up eight gold, nine silver and 17 bronze at the last Games. That’s in contrast to their haul of four gold, five silver and nine bronze from the last three CWGs.
The other major talking point from AFI’s announcement on Sunday was their decision to advance the National inter-state Championships — an event which will serve as selection trials for the Asian Games — from July 15-18 in Kolkata to June 26-29 in Guwahati. AFI had initially wanted it in July but were forced to advance the meet to meet the entry deadline of June 30.
They had initially moved both the Olympic Council of Asia and the Asian Athletics Federation (AAF) to get a special exemption but AFI hadn’t heard anything yet from both. “We haven’t heard from OCA and AAF. We did have the option of advancing it at the last moment but we didn’t want to do that for various factors. So we decided to reschedule the programme.” The decision to move the programme from Kolkata to Guwahati was fairly straightforward. “The ground in Kolkata wasn’t available so we went with Guwahati,” said Valson.
The governing body for the sport in India is also keen to avoid a repeat of the controversy that took place on the eve of the CWG. The names of three athletes — Siddharth Yadav, S Sreeshankar and G Vijayakumari — were rejected by Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) as their applications were received after the entry deadline. To prevent such a scenario playing itself out again, AFI have already issued a clarion call to all state federations. “We have sent letters to all state associations to avoid a situation like this,” Valson pointed out. “If they find anyone close to the qualifying standards, we have asked them to forward us the details of his/her passport so that we can get them on the long list we will be sending to the organisers for purposes of accreditation.”swaroop@newindianexpress.com