THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: O M Nambiar looks up at the glowing, well-designed trophy cabinet at his residence in lush green Maniyur, near Vadakara. So many honours, so many memories. One wells up above the other. There is hardly any space left on the shelf, but there would soon be another occupant squeezing itself into the pack, in the form of the G V Raja life-time achievement award – just another acknowledgement of his deep-felt commitment to athletics.
“When I trained my students, I was probably the most passionate coach in the country,” says Nambiar. “That is not an arrogant statement, it is a fact.”
Nambiar started off as Air Force athletics coach, and from there he moved to Services and later to Kannur Sports Division. Then there was PT Usha, for whom he was the Dhronacharya who taught her the best lessons in her chosen sport.
“My life as a trainer of Usha began as early as she was 12 years of age. She was the most hard-working athlete I have ever seen in India. She was willing to do any core training. The passion for success was very much there in her and I only rekindled it,” says Nambiar, the first recipient of the Dhronacharya award – the nation’s highest hopour for coaches.
And after a long and successful association with Usha, and his retirement as coach back in 1996, the 83-year-old still remains as active as ever. Though his ageing limbs do not have the same strength and stamina as they used to, he trains students, hands guidance and tries to mould them into the athletes he desires.
Nambiar currently has a trainee under him, a 16-year old school girl Aswathy Jayaraj, who has been given food and shelter in his house. And all this is for free because he believes a true coach will remain a coach until he dies and he should not work for money .
“I train her at my home. I have identified a running track around my house for her. If I can put in the right amount of work and use exact training methods, I am confident she might be able to tread Usha’s path,” asserts Nambiar.
The ardent sports lover in him is pained by the fact that another like Usha has not been forthcoming in the country after she retired, and places the blame on the ineffective sports academies and insensitive sports authorities. For him, all of them are reasons for India’s poor show in the Olympics.
“I am sad to say that the Kerala Sports Council is now least interested in the development of sports in the state. No one who can do good things for the future of athletes is on the committee now. Most of them work for money, and it is a world where decisions are taken on one’s whims. This is the reason for sports in Kerala taking a nosedive,” he points out.
Nambiar, however, praises the Sports Authority of India for its efforts in at least keeping the legacy intact.
“Were it not for the SAI which works well and spends a good amount for sports in the state, things would have been far worse,” he feels.
For him, the work rate of Indian athletes is higher than that of foreign athletes. He feels they have the potential to do well in middle-distance running in international events.
“We cannot run as fast as the Afro-Americans, nor do we have stamina like the Ethiopian or Kenyans do. But we are either on par or better than foreign athletes in 400m and 800m. Usha almost won an Olympic medal for us in the 400m hurdles in 1984. And we also had Shiny Wilson in 800 m, who didn’t fully realise her potential,” he says.
On Poor Coaching
Nambiar believes India lacks the services of good coaches who can raise budding athletes into international standards. Further, the current danger for aspiring athletes comes from physical education teachers who are utterly unscientific in training children, he stresses.
“We do not have the best coaches in the country. Many do not know how to develop the skills of an athlete. They use the same technique for everyone. A big number of athletes just fall by the wayside because they follow a bad diet pattern. Another issue with the future stars is that they are burnt-out because teachers give them what they cannot take,” Nambiar says.
On Doping Menace
Doping has long been the curse for athletics. Nambiar is disheartened at the fact that the group of dope-tainted athletes in India is growing faster than ever and unless there is strict punishment, like life ban or jail term, the situation is not going to change. The present ban threat on Russia is another indication of how bad things have turned out to be.
“There was doping earlier too, and Usha was once asked to do five tests because she looked too good for her foreign competitors. They wondered how an Indian athlete performed so well without using drugs. They could not believe it so they repeatedly asked for drug tests. I have not asked any of my trainees to take drugs. There is also a health implication for it too.”
If Nambiar Sir hadn’t seen me, I wouldn’t have been the person that I am now. He is a world class coach who knows how to mould an athlete. Nambiar Sir treated me like a daughter. He had even ignored his daughter, who then was an emerging athlete, to turn focus on me because he thought I had a better future than her — P T Usha, Athletics Legend