Success spurs glamour girls to greater achievements

And Malleswari–occasionaly creasing her forehead and cocking her ear to the side of the incomprehensible question that was lost in the cacaphony– remained unamused.

Going by this hoopla it was surprising that not many knew that Malleswari got married recently. That apart, this 22 year old has travelled far from the hot Telangana plains of Srikakulam. As a 16-year-old living in Andhra she had written a `typo-filled’ letter to the Hinduja Sports Foundation requesting them to accept her under their sponsorship scheme. Today she needs to seek no favours; is the one who calls the shots.

Elsewhere, there was a repeat performance– only on a scale not as grand– where the heroine was a `child woman’, N Kunjarani, clad in a pair of blue jeans and a light pink shirt, squinted through her oversized spectacles at the crowd that surrounded her.

The dimunitive 29-year-old looked visibly pained when she recounted how her stint with a Belgian coach afflicted her with a knee injury that saw her visitng the physiotheraphist and surgeon for a year.’

She’s been a very faithful silver medallist winning 44 medals in international championships, but the gold rush is long due. When will it come? She erupts with chirpy laughter, and says, “I’m happy, I’ll continue with my training. And I have to maintain this standard.” The new rules of the International Weightlifting Federation specify six new weight categories for the Olympics and what pertains to `Kunju’ is the 48 kg category. “I’ll have to eat more,” says this 45.65 kg assistant commandant with the Central Reserve Police Force, before giving some barely audible soundbites for the television reporters.

And, it was not as if the rest of the team — Sumita Laha, Bharti Singh, Jeevan Jyoti, and Pratima Kumari — were left out in the cold.In contrast, Sumita, a powerlifter-turned-weightlifter, seemed in a hurry. She was leaving for Begumpur, a small village near Calcutta where her father Haridas Laha and mother Kalpana Laha wait for their chubby daughter. She will be seeing them after ages, for she trains with the rest of the team at Patiala under coaches Pal Singh Sandhu and A.S Virk.

“Since we did not field the entire team of eight we lost out on the silver to Chinese Taipei who had a full eight member team.” he added.

The next testing ground for these lifters will be the World Championships from December 5-15 at Chiangmai, Thailand. After a short break now, they start training from August 4 at Patiala.

They realise that the World Championships will be the real test. As Bharti Singh says, “It’s not easy living away from my family for months together but I know what I want.” Though she has a two year old daughter to think about, she is very happy that her husband is bent on making her a record breaker. “ I am much more stable now, and who knows, I may surprise myself the way things are shaping up.” Incidentally she is the one who first noticed Malleswari’s potential and recommended her case to potential sponsors in Delhi.

But Kunjarani is more guarded in her assesment of the chances Down Under. “ We used to scurry towards the Chinese to watch them practice. What a world of difference. And not just that, their diet too gives them tremendous adavantage over us. And now the Indonesians are coming in a big way. They are a force to reckon with,” she says.

Malleswari, who will be competing in the 58 kg category in the Sydney Olympics in keeping with the new IWF rules, says ,“I am looking to break the 220 kg barrier,” and, that gives the Indian team enough reason to hope for more laurels in the World Championships.