Khan hopeful to bring Javelin medal home

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Kathmandu, Sept. 19: Being selected for the upcoming 9th South Asian Games, his daily schedule includes coming daily to Dashrath Stadium where he is trained by coaches. Even if he feels that the training required for him is not upto the mark, he has not lost his hope for a medal.

Having not missed SAF Games since he was selected in the third SAF Games of 1987, held in Calcutta SAF, Khursheed Ahmad Khan has been able to give Nepal at least one medal in every SAF Games he participated in javelin throw since the Calcutta SAF Games.

Khan is also targeting one medal at the upcoming 9th Games to be held from October 6 to 15 in Islamabad. It’s been just one and half months of training, and I only hope that I would be able to win a medal this time also," Khan said.

His grudges against his training is not baseless. While India’s javelin thrower Jagdish Singh, who won javelin’s gold medal in 7th and 8th SAF throwing the javelin to 71 and 78 respectively, Khurseed said that his own performance over the year has been going the down hill.

"If there are no better training and no tournaments how can one improve one’s performance?," Khan questions.

Khan, who created national record 16 years ago in the Pokhara’s second national games which is yet to be broken, won bronze medals in the third, fifth and sixth SAF Games. He improved his performance in 7th SAF Games to win silver medal in throwing javelin to 66 meters. However, he had to be satisfied with a bronze in Kathmandu’s 8th SAF despite throwing 70.39 meters, his individual best record.

"How can I improve my performance as there was no international tournament to be participated for the past two years." he said.

Khan is disturbed by the feeling that his contemporary athletes have now been spending retired and very good lives. " The players whom I have defeated have been living a very prosperous life but my condition has not been changed," he rued.

He stressed the need for running the training camps for whole 12 months. Khurseed. who has been trained in Singapore, Bangkok, Kolkata, Germany, Pakistan, New Delhi, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka and has participated in various international tournaments.

Born in the Kapilbastu district’s Banshkhor village, 34-year javelin thrower is mulling to retire from the game after the 9th SAF Games. But being a policeman, he said, he however will have to play for police team. Khan said that in previous years there used to be four or five national atheltics events in the nation but nowadays there are almost none. He also disclosed that he usually throws his javelin to 65/66 meters during his training for the 9th SAF Games.