MUMBAI, April 21: In the twilight of their athletic careers, chums Jagdev Singh Waraich and Surjit Singh competed in different moods at the 20th National Veteran championships that concluded in Thane on Sunday.Waraich's glow of success owes much to triumphs during the latter part of his career but Surjit Singh's keenness is tempered by an unsavoury memory that brought his international aspirations to an abrupt end.The thirty somethings are South Asian Federation (SAF) Games gold medalists and former National champions in their events. Waraich won several awards in the latter part of his career. Surjit, starting off well, was jolted into despondency by a snub from the powers that be.Waraich, shot into prominence with a gold winning performance (63.08 metres) in the hammer throw during the 1992 Dhaka SAF Games. He improved upon it two years later (65.78) at Singapore when he erased a 24-year-old record of Praveen Kumar (65.04). Since then, Waraich's effort continues to occupy a pole position.Anintroduction of a new category (over-35) in the Veterans National Athletics resulted in the 35-year-old Sardar from Gurdaspur, making his debut in the meet that concluded at Thane recently. A regular at the Senior National athletic meets, Waraich feels that the introduction of the semi-masters (over-35) category has raised the competitive level of the veterans meet.The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) deputy superintendent shot into the National athletic scene eight years ago when he claimed the honours in the hammer throw event at Delhi. He continued to dominate the event for the next four years with the Trivandrum Nationals (62.73) being the best.Waraich points to the 1992 season as his best during which he claimed a gold in an international meet at Dhaka. The same year he was conferred upon the Athlete of the Decade award by the Public Sector Sports Association.While Waraich made his mark in 1990 it turned to an unfortunate one for his close friend Surjit Singh, who hailed fromJalandhar.A promising discus thrower, Surjit was in the India camp for the 1990 Asian Games. And despite bettering the qualifying mark during the selection trials, he was kept out of the Beijing-bound squad. Elaborating upon the issue, he says, ``during the selection trials I threw the discus to 53.86 metres which was better than the qualifying mark of 52.80m. But reasons best known to the Amateur Athletic Federation of India (AAFI) bosses I was kept out of the Asiad squad. Interestingly, Sahiba Burijan of Iran claimed the bronze medal during the Games with a throw of 52.70m!``Till this day I don't know why I was left out,'' says Surjit, who has participated in all Nationals since '90.Surjit tasted success early in his career when he won a bronze in the Junior Nationals in 1979 at Hissar. In 1985, he went to Kobe, Japan to participate in the World University Games. But he returned back with a disappointment as he could get only the 11th position. ``The incompetent performance forced me to workharder and I started with a new schedule,'' said the lanky Sardar who is employed with Tata Steel now. And the next year, the hard work paid the dividend when he won the gold medal in SAF Games in 1987 at Calcutta. He added another medal to his bulging tally in 1988 - gold at the Open Nationals at Jamshedpur.Like they say, you can't keep a good guy down.
