Athletes from the northeast part of the country have long chosen Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS) as their go-to place for better training and fulfilling their hopes of becoming world class sportspersons.It hasn’t been easy, of course, considering the accessibility challenges that persist in the region. Keeping that in mind, the institute has decided to open a training hub in Guwahati this year — in addition to its three regional judo centres in Manipur — to train athletes from the region as well as coaches.There are already 455 judokas in the Manipur centres, while 40 are currently training at the main centre in Vijayanagar, Karnataka.“We are in the process of setting up a hub in Guwahati which will be very close to everybody and (we’ll be) running a lot of camps and training out of there,” said Manisha Malhotra, president of IIS, during an interaction with TOI. “I do believe that that can give you a lot of results in the next couple of years.”While it will cater to both residential and non-residential athletes, the major focus will be on preparing coaches from the region with five specific sports in mind.
Manisha Malhotra
“The big focus there is to train the trainers and get the coaches going and then the coaches can go back and do it. So, the five sports that we’re trying to do is athletics, taekwondo, swimming, boxing and archery,” added the former national tennis player.The institute has already produced some notable achievements from the region with the most famous being Manipuri judoka Linthoi Chanambam. Last year, Assam swimmer Tirthank Pegu also won a silver in the boys’ 200m butterfly at Asian Youth Games.Despite their successes though, it hasn’t been easy considering what’s been going on in some parts of the region. Keeping that in mind, the institute has done its best to comfort them.“It was a very difficult period emotionally for the kids. They didn’t know what’s happening back home because they couldn’t get hold of phones and then there were curfews,” said Malhotra.“We tried to facilitate in any way we could, like arranging for people to go back and forth, but we didn’t want them to stay in a conflict zone for long periods. We also tried to create a situation where more activities and counselling were provided.”Irrespective of the hardships though, Malhotra was in awe of the women athletes from the northeast states and said, “The women from the northeast are so much stronger physically than the rest of the country.”Hopefully they will continue to impress in the coming days and make not only the northeast but the whole India proud.
