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Marathon runner Jaisha flays officials for ditching her
NEW DELHI: Distance runner OP Jaisha wilted in the heat at the finish of the Rio Olympics marathon and remained unconscious for a couple of hours as she was put
NEW DELHI: Distance runner OP Jaisha wilted in the heat at the finish of the Rio Olympics marathon and remained unconscious for a couple of hours as she was put on drip.
Back home after the Games, the 33-year-old runner lashed out on athletics federation officials for manning the special stalls --- other than those provided by the Rio organisers --- to provide her water, which left her half dead in the end.
Jaisha’s prickly relationship with India’s Belarusian coach Nikolai Snesarev also came to the fore as she claimed she wanted to run the 1,500m but was forced to take up the gruelling race by the coach, known as a tough taskmaster.
Jaisha, 33, was left too drained as she finished 89th, clocking 2hour 47min 19sec, much slower than her personal best (2:34.43) clocked at the 2015 Beijing world championships.
“The competition was at 9am, I ran in scorching heat. There was no water for us, neither recovery drinks nor food. Only once in 8km did we get water (from the organisers) which did not help at all. All the countries had their stalls every 2km but our country’s stall was empty,” she was quoted as saying by PTI.
“We’re supposed to be given drinks by our technical officials, it’s the rule. We cannot take water from any other team. I saw the India board there but there was nothing. I had a lot of problem, I fainted after the race. I was administered glucose, I thought I would die.”
However, Athletics Federation of India secretary CK Valson told HT that it was the coach’s decision to not have those additional water points. “We had collected accreditation passes and made arrangements, but Nikolai refused. How could we go ahead?” he asked.
Kavita Raut, the second marathon runner, didn’t opt for additional drinks along the route.
At top marathons, ‘water stations’ provided by the organisers are supplemented with special ones by countries to provide supplement drinks to their athlete. However, athletes must be used to such drinks during training for it to be effective.
Jaisha and Nikolai have not got along. In January, Jaisha, Lalita Babar and Sudha Singh (both 3000m steeplechase runners) quit the national camp in Ooty in protest after he did not allow them to represent their employers Railways in the national cross-country meet in Pune. They returned after the federation intervened.
There was also disagreement over qualification for Rio. Lalita, Sudha and Jaisha all qualified for the marathon, but were not keen to run the event. “I want to qualify for 1500m or 5,000m,” Jaisha had said in April. However, she couldn’t qualify while Sudha and Babar made the grade in steeplechase and dropped marathon.
