Athletes face difficulties in travelling miles for their training in Bangalore because of limited sports facilities.
It is hard for Rebecca Thomas, a ninth standard student to manage school and her sports training. Thomas is a running enthusiast. Every evening her mother drops her at the Kanteerava stadium for training which is 11 kilometers away from her home. They usually reach home by 8p.m.
“There are no running tracks available near our house. Sometimes because of traffic, we reach home by 10p.m. My daughter is very enthusiastic about sports and she is doing very well in sports, still it is tough to imagine her career as a sportsperson in Bangalore as the track is so far away. In such conditions it is not possible to be consistent in training for a long time,” said Rebecca’s mother.
Bangalore has only three sports facilities.. Kanteerava Stadium, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Campus near Bangalore University, and the Government Sports High School in Vidya Nagar.
The number of students who train on these tracks is gradually decreasing due to less training grounds nearby and excessive traffic. A practicing coach at Kanteerava stadium said that they used to train at least 50 students just five years back but now the number has come down to 20.
“Students in our stadium come from far away. There should be more tracks maybe under the same organisation. For example, not everyone can train in SAI. You have to be an established athlete to train there. This brings down the number of tracks to just two. We are losing a lot of talent by neglecting sports facilities,” said the coach.
Bangalore is lacking in producing high-performance track and field athletes lately. In 2019, a 29-year-old athlete, Vinay Krishnamurthy from Mysore qualified to participate in the internationally acclaimed Ultra-Trail-Du-Mont-Blanc (UTMB).
Ashwini-G-Bhat, a 35-year-old from Bangalore represented the country in an international sports event in Romania in 2021. She said that since the stadium was so far away, it was becoming hard to manage sports, career, and home. Thatis why she continued with her job as a software engineer and took a break from sports for some time. In 2015 she gave up her job and started to train in Kanteerava Stadium and Lal Bagh every morning.
Former track and field athlete, Reeth Abraham explained that not everyone has the luxury to quit their jobs and focus on their sports career. Moreover, before one would reach Kanteerava stadium within half an hour from any part of the city but now it is just not possible. “I feel that the lack of tracks and increase in traffic has hit the economically backward section much more. That is why we are not seeing raw talent anymore. Apart from that, parents are reluctant to drop their kids off every day at the field which is so far away from their house,” she said.
Former athlete and coach Aiyaapa suggested that there is a need to lay 200 meters of synthetic track in each zone of Bangalore. And government coaches should be provided at all tracks. He said, “Bringing good coaches from other states is also an option rather than having no coach at all. Bangalore being one of the top-tier cities and Information and technology (IT) hub of the country, people expect the city to be developed in all aspects. But usually in our country sports is the last thing the government cares about.”
Moreover the athletic tracks are not available in any gaming arena. Manager of Freaking Gaming Zone, Gopalan Arcade Mall, Mysore Road, informed that no gaming arena can include athletic tracks as they require larger space and huge amount of money. A basic track by global standards require at least Rs six crores.
S. Srinivasa, manager at the executive engineer’s office, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Jayanagar, said that they made a synthetic track for athletes in the Kittur Rani Chennamma (KRC) stadium in Jayanagar in 2023. “The renovation of the stadium was done on the constant request letters submitted by athletes and coaches. The project was initiated by the then Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Jayanagar, Sowmya Reddy. At present we do not have any requests from athletes or coaches. We also have not given any plans or orders to work on any stadium.”
Meanwhile Department of Youth and Sports Empowerment (DYES) is not considering creating new tracks. Their focus is to maintain the already available tracks.
