School athletics doesn’t deserve the attention it gets: Abdulla Aboobacker

CWG silver medallist feels athletes’ focus must be on excelling in their sporting careers and not on securing govt jobs
KOCHI: Abdulla Aboobacker was one of the few athletes from Kerala who made it big on the international stage in recent times after making his mark in Kerala State Schools Athletics meets. Even though Aboobacker was able to take his athletic career to the next level, many others, who were equally good or even better than the Kozhikode boy at the school level failed to progress to the next stage in their career.And Aboobacker believes there is a reason behind it.

“We need to develop a proper system at the government level for Kerala sports. In Kerala, the mentality or attitude of emerging athletes is wrong. If you ask the young athletes who compete at school athletics, for most of them, their target is not sports oriented, but it is to get a government job, which they feel would make their future safe. We can’t blame them because it might be their circumstances, which might be forcing them to seek a job. The government and the sports administrators have played a role in developing this wrong mindset among promising athletes. Certainly, school athletics doesn’t deserve the attention it deserves within the state,” blames Aboobacker.

“Instead of demanding jobs, the athletes should be voicing for proper financial support from the government to excel in their sporting career. If you can excel, fame and financial security will come automatically. But to achieve glory in sports, we need a proper support system, which sadly we lack in Kerala,” added Aboobacker, who took the unconventional route of finding a personal jumping coach right after his school athletics days.
“After school, unlike my friends who looked for the best college, I searched for the best coach and ended up at MA George sir’s doorstep. That was the turning point of my career,” reveals Aboobacker, who recently won the Asian Athletics gold and is preparing to put up a good show at the World Athletics Championship and Asian Games in the coming weeks.

But Aboobacker admits that the initial support offered by his school was vital.