Coe: The next four years are exciting for athletics

World Athletics president Lord Sebastian Coe at a city hotel on Saturday. Pic/Anurag Ahire

Lord Sebastian Coe, Olympic 1500m champion from Great Britain, is in Mumbai to grace a celebration of track & field medals won by India at major meets, the latest being a rich haul at the Hangzhou Asian Games. The Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 Olympian faced the media in his capacity as President, World Athletics.

"The next four years are exciting for athletics. As I enter my last term as president, there will be a ruthless, relentless focus on the main product, ie athletics, guided by the way youngsters view the sport and their expectations from athletics," he said, elaborating: "the focus will be based on data. There is no place for misplaced nostalgia. The process began at Budapest during World Athletics 2023, when we engaged with fans present in the stadium, viewers on television about what they want."

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The Athletics Federation of India (AFI), playing host to Lord Coe, have been ringing in radical changes in the development and management here, from doing away with specialisation in a particular event for age group athletes and decentralised training centres across the nation in place of camps at established venues. AFI president Adille Sumariwalla, introducing the legendary athlete as "quarter Indian" (born in Delhi and family are regular visitors for stay and work in India), informed that World Athletics expertise is tapped for workshops, bringing in coaches to establish parameters.

"Research by us, inputs from the world body revealed that from youngsters taking up athletics across age groups, a miniscule percentage go on to make a mark at the senior level. Coach education and parent awareness is important to ensure every child will play a minimum of three sports involving various muscles so that overall development takes place in the child," he said. Coe expressed appreciation of the AFI president's elevation as one of four vice presidents in World Athletics. "It is important that India has a place at the top of the sport because it makes economic sense. Over the last decade, it is a nation absorbed in sport. India is one of the important national federations," said Coe. Incidentally, he and Sumariwalla competed for Great Britain and India respectively at Moscow 1980, then took up key roles in athletics management after retirement.

India's performances in track & field, men and women, are getting noticed, from Neeraj Chopra's javelin gold at Tokyo 2020, medals across disciplines at Asian Athletics Bangkok 2023 and at Hangzhou.