Sports hub Meerut needs world-class athletics track
LUCKNOW: During the pre-sendoff virtual interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the Tokyo Olympics in July, national champion and record holder race-walker Priyanka Goswami raised her voice for lying of an international standard athletics track in her home town Meerut.
“We need to have an international standard athletics track as well as dedicated coaches for the young athletes”—was the straight and simple comment of Goswami, when PM asked her to tell about her problems.
In fact, Goswami, who finished a creditable 17th at the Summer Olympics after enjoying early lead, had repeated the long-pending demand of athletes of the town, which is also known as one of the biggest sports hubs of India.
Goswami as well as many other top athletes of the country, who have consistently been doing well at the international level, including Asian Games gold medalist discus thrower Seema Punia, Asian Games bronze medalist javelin thrower Annu Rani, long distance runner Parul Chaudhary, Rupal Chaudhary, Vidhi Singh, Chavi Sherawat, Vishal Saxena, Kuldeep etc. belong to Meerut, but practice outside the city due to non-availability of the facilities for them.
“That’s a reality for the athletes of Meerut and other neighbouring districts in the Western Uttar Pradesh,” Anu Kumar, secretary of the Meerut Athletics Association said without any glitch.
“There are over 1000 plus athletes in the area, but they don’t have facilities for training. The only government-run Kaislash Prakash Stadium doesn’t have even hurdles to conduct the athletics meet.”
“That’s the reason why all our top athletes do training either at different SAI Ceneres, New Delhi or go outside the country to train for the international events,” said Kumar, adding, “Even the government-run athletics hostel in Meerut was shifted to somewhere else in 2005.”
Interestingly, the state government instead of having an athletics track in Meerut has been lying a hockey astro turf at the Kailash Prakash Stadium. “It’s good to have a hockey astro turf in the city, but our primary need is to have an athletics track,” said Kumar, who believes that strongly-built structure of kids from “jaat” community in the area are best suited for athletics and wrestling.
“Kids in this community always have a strong built, height and above all the culture of having rich diet, including ghee, milk and curd, make them stronger for events like running, throwing and even wrestling,” he said. “If we have an international standard athletics stadium here in Meerut, we can see this city producing many medalists at the international levels.”
He, however, said that this rural belt of the western Uttar Pradesh, has been a supply centre of strongly-built individuals for Delhi Police and our military.
“You can see thousands of athletes running on the roads of Meerut and its adjoining districts every morning early in the morning as they use athletics as a tool to get jobs in Delhi Police and military,” he said.
Enthusiasm for athletics is Meerut is such that even in the recent district championships, over 1000 athletes appeared in different disciplines in both male and female categories.
“We have 30-odd clubs and few clubs of athletics in the city being run by former international athletes, and they have been producing good results at the national level and that too without having even basic infrastructure.’
“We couldn’t get hurdles during the district meet as the person responsible for this at the Meerut stadium had gone on personal tour and refused the facilities to us,” he said, adding, “Somehow we barrowed the eequipments to conduct the meet.’
“Look at the infrastructure in the other cities like Sonipat, Delhi and Panchkula, who have adequate number of international standard athletics tracks, and covering that much of distance on routine basis for all the athletes of Meerut to train isn’t possible.”