BHUBANESWAR: The mercury crossed 40 degree Celsius once again on Saturday. Maximum touched 44 degrees. Oppressive heat and humidity is making it worse and feels like 51 degrees. No matter how much athletes get acclimatised, this definitely is not conducive for high-level sporting events. At least not for an event like Inter-state Senior Athletics Nationals which is doubling up as a selection trial for Asian Games, where athletes persevere to give their best.
Tejaswin Shankar, who has been competing in decathlon over the last two days couldn’t help but tweet: “Absolute horrendous heat at the #interstatechampionhips Everyone still competing in the dec(athlon) deserves to be judged by more than just a score at the end of the comp.” On Friday, sprinter Srabani Nanda was quite straightforward. “It’s very tough to perform in this climate here now specifically when you are organising a qualifying championship for international meets. They must provide a better climatic condition to achieve better results,” she had said after her silver-winning performance.
In a competition where athletes start peaking, if not national records at least meet records are created, apart from sporadic instances of personal bests, nothing much of note has taken place. Ahead of the Asian track and field championships in Thailand, where it is expected to bit cooler, this definitely will not help in preparation.
Another athlete Parul Choudhury ran her personal best in the 3000m Steeplechase last month during the Los Angeles Grand Prix held at the Drake Stadium with a timing of 9:29.51. But her performance here was not her best. She managed 9:34.23s on a hot and humid Saturday. “I was hoping to qualify for the world championship but unfortunately due to the extremely humid and hot conditions here, I could not despite my best efforts. I ran the first two kilometres at the same steady pace but in the end, I went a little, over my target time due to the heat.”
However, Athletic Federation of India president Adille Sumariwalla had a different point of view. “This hot weather is not at all a plea to your failure,” he said. “Being a top-class athlete you must get used to different types of weather conditions. The winners never complained here but those who have failed took the weather issues”.
Earlier, the Inter-state championship was supposed to be held at Ranchi in the month of July. Regarding preponing it to the hot month of June at Bhubaneswar, Sumariwalla said, “During this time it’s hot everywhere in the country. We are forced to prepone the events due to the change of rules to provide the athletes' lists before 75 days of the Asian Games. Earlier it was 30 days.”