Considered one of the pioneers in sports medicine in India, Lt Gen S A Cruze, VSM passed away on Thursday following a heart attack. He was 70 and is survived by his wife and two daughters. Lt Gen S A Cruze was instrumental in the establishment of state-of-the-art sports medicine and human performance evaluation lab for the Army’s Sports Medical Centre and in setting up similar labs for the Sports Authority of India (SAI). He also played a key role in starting the boys’ sports company in the army. For his service to sports in the country, he was awarded the Shiv Chhatrapati Award by the Maharashtra government and the Krida Bhushan Award by Symbiosis International University. An alumnus of St Vincent School and Wadia College, Lt Gen Cruze did his MBBS from the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) in 1974 and was awarded the President’s Gold Medal for best outgoing student, the Krishna Menon trophy for best sportsman and the Pune University Gold Medal for representing the University in hockey, football and athletics in the same year. Between 1983-1985, he was deputed by the Centre for training in sports medicine at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and Switzerland. He was selected for the Asian Games at Tehran in 1974, the Montreal Olympics in 1974 and accompanied mountaineering expeditions to Kanchenjunga, in 1977 and the Mt Nanda Devi expedition in 1980. He was also the doctor for the Indian men’s and women’s hockey teams in the 90s. Newsletter | Click to get the day's best explainers in your inbox He was selected as head of the scientific support team to the armed forces and national teams and helped train over 275 international medallists of the armed forces in athletics, cross country, walk, marathon, shooting, archery and rowing. He was a member of both the Planning Commission for developing sports sciences and the Narasimha Rao Committee for raising sports standards in the country.
