Core group exits ill-equipped venue

The equipment used at this meet will be replaced during the games. The present apparatus has also been taken on loan from the organisers of the national games in Ranchi.

The electronic scoreboard is missing too. With the result,all tabulation is being done manually and those who are watching,have no clue about which team’s ahead till the fag end.

All this mismanagement made the Indian gymnastic team’s foreign coach Vladimir Chertkov,pull his players out in the run-up to the event. Though the entire men’s and women’s core team along with their coaches had turned up for the event,they left for Pune on Tuesday,wasting 5-6 days of crucial practice days before the Games.

“I am extremely shocked. This is wrong,the equipment is way too outdated,we can’t endanger the athletes,so we decided not to participate. This is like telling a swimmer to just come and start diving and tell him that if you dive well,we’ll fill in water. Any coach in the world would be disappointed to find that the team is here but is not able to get adequate practice,” Cherktov said.

Optimism running high

despite last minute changes in his training plan,Cherktov is optimistic about the team’s chances. “We wanted familiarity with what is to come in CWG,I was looking at podium training but we’ll have to work things differently now. In international events also you don’t get equipment in advance but the problem is that we lost the home advantage,we should have trained one and a half months in advance. But there is immense talent in the men’s team. I am expecting a minimum of five,six medals. In terms of the athletes’ standards we have filled such gap in one year what many of our competitor’s could not do in ten years,” he added.

Cherktov says Indian gymnastics has come a long way from when he joined the team one year back. “Two years back when I was researching about Indian gymnastics before coming here,the federation didn’t even have a website. But step by step our training has gone well,now if you look at improvement of scores in the past six months,we are way ahead of our competitors. The story is little different in the women’s side,their development had to start from the beginning when I joined.”

Ask him when is the right time for India to start aiming at the Olympics and he doesn’t hesitate to say that it is right now. “After the CWG there is world championships which is a qualifying event and there is another qualifying next year. Although only top 8 teams make it to the Olympics,and we might not be those,even if we make it to the top 16,two of our top players will be able to participate in the individual events and that will be great,” the Russian said.

Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) secretary,Kan Singh Rathore also agreed that since the core team is not participating,the event only helps other teams get a platform to perform. “The participants here are getting a competition plus the venue’s functional area is being put to test but since the main apparatus is not here,it was decided that the core team skip the event to avoid any injuries.”