KARATAKAS FROM CHENNAI FOR SAF GAMES

Eight times State Champion, National Gold Medallist - 1996, National Silver Medallist - 1998 and 1999, South Zone Gold Medallist - 1999 and Gold Medallist at the International Invitational Championship 2000, at Chennai. That sums up the achievements of 29-year-old Suresh Manuel, National and State Karate Champion.  He is one of the five karatakas from Chennai who are part of the 16-member Karate team that has been selected for the South Asian Federation Games by the All India Karate Federation (AIKF).  Chennaibest.com spoke to Suresh Manuel about his experience and his other teammates from Chennai. 

Suresh started learning Karate from the age of 13 from Sen Sei Kalaimani.  He proved to be a promising student and soon had his 4^th degree Black Belt.  Speaking about his preparation for the SAF Games he said, "I am practising for four hours everyday, 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening.  While I practise with my teammates in the morning, in the evenings I practise alone and work out on my endurance.  Last time, the Indian team got mostly silver medals.  This time it is bound to change and we will definitely return with a gold.  We have had more practise this time around even though we still do not have foreign coaches. I am very confident that we will bring back the gold".

The other members of the 5-member team from Chennai include, Mohana Sundaram V, who is the senior most in the whole team.  At 38 he is still fighting fit and wants to achieve something great before he retires.  T Senthil is a seven-time National Champion.  Masood Ahmed is yet another superb karataka, who is a four-time National Champion and Gopalakrishnan, is the youngest of the lot, having just come from the junior level to the men's level.  He has however performed commendably at the junior level, having won the gold medal three times at the Junior level of the National Championships.

Recently, the State Government has announced a reward scheme, where a sportsperson would get a huge sum of money for a gold in Olympics.  Unless a sportsperson is backed and rewarded for the laurels that he wins for the state and the country at the National level, South Asian level and at the Asian level, he cannot be in a position to win a medal at the Olympics.  In countries abroad, in sports like Karate and so on, the players are segregated into various classes and according to their performance in their class they are rewarded accordingly.   In our country also the same needs to be done, the players at various levels from Club, District, State, Zone, National, South Asian, Asian and World level need to be rewarded according to each level.  And unless this is done, the Indian dream of winning a gold at the Olympics would remain just a dream.

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