World Athletics Championship this year held successfully at Moscow in Russia has just been concluded. Kudos to Russia for organising this Championship so successfully. The hero of this Championship came out again the sprinter Usain Bolt from Jamaica and again the black skin power came out dominant, in Track and Field events, the Black Power out beat White Power thereby again proving its excellence in sports.
In any Athletics Meet, 100 Metres sprint and 100 x 4 Sprint Relay are the 2 most interesting and exciting events to know who is the fastest man on this planet individually and which is the fastest quartet of this planet respectively. Because of this interest in this Meet every eye was focused on these two events. Individually Usain Bolt regained his supremacy as the fastest man of this planet.
Now, regarding the 4 x 100 Relay, its whole magic depends not much on running fastest as you can but more on the mode and efficiency of handing over of Batons to the next sprinter.
Throughout my scholastic career at Arpora and at St. Xavier's College Mapusa, I was a deep athlete as fastest runner of Goa and an individual champion of Goa. My glorious days in this field were during my school career where I was guided in this field by that genius Principal of the School, the late Fr. Philippe Neri Mendonca. During those days till my last participation, Arpora School always won the championship by focusing more on both the Relays which fetched more marks to win the overall championship.
Taking this view into consideration, Fr. Mendonca personally used to guide us how to exchange the Batons and we all the 4 representatives of the school used to pass the Baton to the next runner with lightning speed without any pause or slowing down while passing the Baton. Everyone used to admire us then and I was always the first runner creating a lead in the beginning itself while second was Shelu, third Andre Joao both from Calangute and the last was Peter from Parra.
Speaking on the efficiency of this Relay team, Fr. Mendonca once said, such a magnificent quartet he has never seen before in Goa though there were gigantic runners and sprinters in Goa.
The purpose of this write-up is to comment on the efficiency of Jamaican Relay team of 100 x 4 that won the Gold Medal in the just concluded Moscow Meet. Though this Relay Team won the first place for Jamaica yet according to me it had some flaws and not perfect in its efficiency.If Fr. Mendonca was alive now he would surely agree with my view point though this Relay Team was trained by the world best trainers to create world best Relay Team.
Its first flaw was of slowing down at the time of changing the Baton to the next sprinter. Its second flaw was receiving the Baton in one hand and then transferring it to the other hand thereby changing the concentration to this process of transferring the Baton from one hand to the other thus slowing down of the speed. And its third flaw was taking more time to look behind at the sprinter carrying the Baton.
Among all the 4 sprinters, Usain Bolt alone was perfect in his methods and again he was the hero of this golden Relay team of Jamaica. In this Relay Team there was not only one Usain Bolt but 4 Usain Bolts and precisely because of this Jamaica won the Gold Medal.
India is having such a vast population with such a vast geographical boundaries compared to tiny Jamaica and yet India cannot produce world class athletes means something difficult to digest. Jamaica creates topmost athletes in the world both in male as well as in female domain. India is still taking shelter and pleasure in creating one Milkha Singh and one P.T. Usha some years ago even though neither of them won any Olympic Medal. In this Meet at Moscow, India sent a powerful team of 15 athletes who all returned home empty handed and powerless.
I feel India must hire the know-how and trainer from Jamaica to train Indian athletes especially when they are very young. At the age of 16 Usain Bolt started creating ripples in running whence he was entrusted with the efficient trainers who moulded him into the World best with the help of world best facilities. India can also send its budding athletes to Jamaica for further advanced training and thus produce best of athletes both in male and female ranks.
When I ran the fastest 100 metres and created a record for Goa and became individual champion of Goa, I was just 17. And this feat I attained on my own efforts without any guidance of a qualified professional coach. If at that time I was picked up by the concerned authorities for further professional training, God knows where I would reach. Like me there are many young boys and girls rotting in the absence of proper avenues, guidance and facilities.
Gulf Arabs became powerful soccer Powers in Asia only because of the best of soccer training methods and facilities they hired from Brazilian soccer.
Kuwait.