• Loreni Tsanglao, NET Correspondent, Nagaland 

The President of Athletics Federation of India (AFI) – Adille J. Sumariwalla; President of South Asian Athletic Federation (SAAF) – Dr Lalit Bhanot; and Associate Vice-President of Athletics Federation of India (AFI) – Abu Metha today briefed the media, in view of the 2nd South Asian Cross Country Championship (SACCC) and 56th National Cross Country Championship (NCCC) scheduled to be held on March 26, 2022 at Indira Gandhi Stadium in Kohima.

Altogether 50 athletes from 5 SAAF countries will be participating in the international category.

At the national level, 34 states and boards are represented, with 378 men and 296 women making up a total of 674 athletes.

According to Sumariwalla, Northeast India has a tremendous amount of sporting talent.

“We believe that from this event, the youngsters will get enthused by witnessing this event. We are trying to do talent identification here and provide high-performance coaches to train the Nagaland team.” – asserted the AFI President.

He emphasized the need to create a full sports ecosystem with proper infrastructure, coaches, athletes, officials etc.

Sumariwalla said it took the federation 15 years to secure an Olympic medal in athletics.

Adding that the federal has two-pronged strategy – one is grass-root level and the other is elite level, “we have foreign coaches for the elite strategy, we are also identifying events for the North East and we have got a set of coaches for that.”

He mentioned that AFI did the maximum work during the COVID-19 Pandemic; and added that AFI created thousands of coaches and conducted online courses for pre-level 1 and level 1 for school teachers, parents, and coaches, training for level 2 was also conducted in different languages in over 600 districts.

Meanwhile, Bhanot said the event is the second edition of the SAAF competition and the first one was held in Bhutan, which had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abu Metha mentioned that physical infrastructure is of great importance. “One such structure is synthetic tracks which is one of the foundations of sports that will help the athletes, and investing in synthetic tracks is an investment in all-round sports. He said the Federation is strengthening the ecosystem of human resources and the ecosystem of sports should be upgraded in the State and the North East.” – he said.

The SAAF President said, if synthetic tracks are built in different districts and states across the country, it would be easier for athletes to train and also encourage more youngsters to take part in national and international level championships.

“It is an intense program which is fun-oriented to bring children into the athletic stream through fun and games and by the end of 2022 it will be launched” – he added.