Liksy Joseph opens up with Rahul Preeth about how she emerged from obscurity
Until two weeks ago, Liksy Joseph was a name that was largely confined to almanacs. Having been in athletics for almost a decade, she has won numerous medals, but those achievements were usually buried among a bevy of more fancied names.
But on June 4, her status quo underwent a major transformation. From an obscure athlete, she turned into a promise of the future, bagging the heptathlon silver in the Asian Athletics Championships.
Accumulating her personal best score of 5,554 points from the seven combined events, the 25-year-old girl from Wayanad has claimed her rightful spot in the Indian athletics scenario.
“Winning the silver medal in China was the tipping point of my decade-long career. I have won several medals before this, but none gave me the satisfaction that this one did. It gives me a reason to continue in sports,” said the Central Railway employee, who trains at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala.
If the points she won in Wuhan were scored at Incheon a year ago, India would have got another medal in the 2014 Asian Games. The bronze in the event went to Ukraine’s Yuliya Tarasova, who collected 72 points less than what Liksy fetched in Wuhan.
However, misfortune had come in the form of an injury. A pulled hamstring sullied her performance in the Asian Games qualifying event in August 2014 and ultimately prevented her from getting a spot in the Indian team to Incheon.
It could not have come at a worst time for Liksy. Having won the gold with a personal best score in the inter-state athletics meet a few weeks before, she said she was all psyched up for the Federation Cup, which would act as the Asian Games qualifier.
“I wanted to be part of the Asian Games so much that I started worrying too much about the injury. Evidently, it got the better of me,” said Liksy, who came third in the Federation Cup behind Sushmita Singha Roy and Swapna Burman.
Though she passed the Asian Games qualifying mark, she couldn’t make it to the national team as there were only two entries for heptathlon. Sushmita and Swapna, who indeed went to Incheon, finished fourth and fifth with 5,194 and 5,178 points respectively.
“Missing the Asian Games ticket is the biggest regret in my life. I think if I hadn’t injured myself ahead of the qualifiers, I would have won a medal in the Asian Games,” says Liksy, whose ambition now is to win a medal in the next Asian Games in 2018.
“It is not that she managed to overhaul her performance in one day. She has always been a talented girl; only that a lot of people came to know about it with her winning the silver in China. In fact, her time is only yet to come,” said Sanjay Garnaik, who coaches her in Patiala.
According to him, Liksy can easily add 150 to 200 more points to her personal best within the next one year, and with a little more effort, stretch it to 300 or perhaps 400.
“She is excellent in long jump, 800m and 200m, and there is room for improvement in hurdles, high jump and shot put. She needs to improve in javelin throw as well,” the coach listed out her opportunities.
Adwaidh Rajan finds out the spark that propelled two-lapper Jinson Johnson
His only bragging rights in athletics till 2007 was a third-placed finish in the Koyilandy educational district athletics meet, while being a student of St George’s HSS, Kulathuvayal.
However, later that year, Jinson would meet K M Peter, a bank secretary by profession, at his village of Chakkittapara in Kozhikode district -- an acquaintance that lit a fire in Jinson’s athletics career.
“Until I was 15, I was training alone and many things I was doing were unscientific and that reflected in my performances on the track,” says Jinson.
But a more disciplined training under Peter for over an year helped set the wheels in motion.
“I knew he had a lot of talent in him and all he needed was someone to guide him. I tried to train and motivate him, but at the end of the day it is all down to his hard work,” says Peter who is as excited as his ward following Jinson’s silver in 800m at the 21st Asian Athletics Championships held at Wuhan, China earlier this month.
Completing his school, Jinson joined the Kerala State Sports Council’s centralised sports hostel at Kottayam where he was coached by George Emmanuel while pursuing his graduation from Baselius College. However, his stint with KSSC was cut short after receiving the offer from Army Sports Institute in Pune in 2009.
The 24-year old, currently posted at the Army Artillery Centre, is being coached by Mohammed Kunhi, the Services and national athletics coach. “Training under him has helped me a lot and I now feel that moving to the Army might have been the best decision I have made,” Jinson says.
At Wuhan, he clinched silver behind Sudanese-born Qatari athlete Musaab Abdelrahman Bala, but with a timing that was well short of his personal best of 1:47.80 minutes achieved at the senior nationals in Hyderabad in 2012.
“I feel I could have done better, but I am not complaining. I will now be working hard to improve my timing,” Jinson says from the national camp in Dharamshala.
“There is a long way to qualify for the Worlds and Olympics, but with familiar teammates like Sajeesh Joseph and coaches around, I am comfortable with the expectations,” he adds.
The Asian meet quickly followed up by the national camp meant that Jinson is yet to visit his home after his latest triumph, but he is unperturbed. Not for nothing is he an Asian silver medallist, and gunning for more success.
Jisna Mathew recounts, to Riyas Ali, the experiences from her first big event
Jisna is a quiet, shy girl who often avoids public glare. She is wont to speak with limited words, often preferring to finish her talk in haste. But watch her in a race, the confidence and aggression would seem uncharacteristic for a girl of that nature.
Just 16, she is now the y0ungest senior Asian athletics medal winner from the country, having been part of the women’s
4 x 400 metre relay squad that clinched silver in the Asian Athletics Championships.
The other morning, it was raining heavily and Jisna put herself through the paces on the synthetic track at the Medical College ground in Kozhikode.
“The condition was even worse in China. I really struggled to acclimatise because of the hostile weather there,” Jisna says, talking of the the climate she had to encounter in her first-ever big-ticket event.
“Wuhan was an experience. Winning a silver with my seniors has surely boosted my morale. This is a feat many would be dreaming of the country and I am more than happy to achieve it. The biggest plus is the foreign exposure. This is a moment I will never forget in life,” adds the quarter–miler.
Jisna says she was very nervous and tense before her event, but believes these kinds of meets will help her cure those ills in future events.
“You would be facing a world class field, and there is a possibility that you may crack under pressure,” she says.
Meanwhile, sprint queen P T Usha, her trainer and mentor, says Jisna’s showing in China reinstated the belief she is one for the future.
“We all know her talent. She has proven it time and time again. A performance with senior athletes will dispel any notion that she is just a flash in the span,” points out Usha who had won five golds in the 1985 Asian Track and Field Championships in Jakarta.
Usha believes her feat in China is a cut above what she achieved as a junior.
“She works really hard on the track. There is an inner fight between the trainees here (Usha School of Athletics). If Jisna performs better than fellow athlete Tintu Luka, Tintu would be upset and start working hard on the field. This has helped my trainees,” Usha points out.
For Jisna, who had clocked a creditable personal best time of 53.84 seconds in the 400m final at in the Asian Youth Athletics Championship, Usha is the chief reason for her medal-winning show in Wuhan.
“Usha madam’s training is world class. She teaches various techniques that help us overcome the problems of competing on foreign stages.”
