19.12.2007

Pune presents as junior goal

As 2008 promises a mammoth year for athletics with the Olympic Games, World Junior Championships and some, forget not the Commonwealth Youth Games in October.

For many of the country’s best athletes under the age of 20, Bydgoszcz, Poland in July is the target and will remain so until the qualification window closes on March 16.

But for those not selected for the world juniors, the city of Pune in India could provide a terrific foundation for a career in the sport.

Athletics Australia’s National Youth Performance Manager Sara Mulkearns, who will oversee the selection of athletes for both meets, has made it clear that opportunities will be shared.

“Athletes will be selected for one or the other, not both,” she confirmed. “We’ll be very mindful of making international opportunities available to as many kids as we can in 2008, so this should work out well.”

The governing body’s team of national event and national youth event coaches will have the hands-on task of recommending team selections, with both to be confirmed around March 20.

There are key differences; as an under-19 competition (1990 and younger as opposed to world juniors being 1989, 1990 and 1991 born), the Commonwealth Youth Games uses the IAAF’s under-20 implement specifications. And combined events, steeplechase and walks won’t be hosted in Pune.

Given this and the depth of athletes in some events, it will be a nervous wait for many who secure the required standards. That energy will extend to the selectors too.

Destination Bydgoszcz or Pune?

For the Australian Commonwealth Games Association, buoyed by the very successful Commonwealth Youth Games of Bendigo 2004 and the senior edition of Melbourne 2006, Pune is a premier event.

Pune, pronounced Poona, is India’s seventh largest city and sits about 150 kilometres east of Mumbai. Widely recognised for its education and growing auto industry, around one of its three million population are considered young adults.

A stadium is being purpose-built for the Games along with other developments to accommodate the hundreds of athletes, coaches, officials and families expected from 71 countries.

Two years later, as was the case with Bendigo and Melbourne, the hub of Delhi will host the senior games - for which many athletes could expect to return.

“It’ll definitely be in the sights of some that would be competing at the Commonwealth Youth,” said Dani Samuels (pictured), who represented Australia in 2004 and won gold in the shot put and discus. These days she’s considered the country’s best female thrower.

“It was a good experience to compete against those in the Commonwealth. For a lot of those people, it’s a good lead-up to aiming for the next Commonwealth Games in two years. It’s definitely possible at that age - I won (in Melbourne) at 17.”

That was an impressive bronze in the discus at Melbourne 2006 and, since then, Samuels has added World Championships representation to her growing list of achievements. Now Beijing is a prospect.

“You get that experience in competing with athletes from other countries and it’s those countries and those people who you’re probably going to compete against the rest of your life,” she added.

For Australian decathlon champion Erik Surjan, there is another interesting story to tell. While he has combined his events for the last four years, the 24 year-old was a very talented junior long jumper - which saw him selected for the inaugural Commonwealth Youth Games in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2000.

Winning a bronze medal with a leap of 7.06m, seven years on Surjan still considers the opportunity he was given to represent his country a career highlight.

“Any time you get to represent Australia, it’s a wonderful feeling,” he said. “You’re out there representing 20 million people from arguably the greatest country on Earth. It’s definitely an honour.

“Often you hear (Australian cricket captain) Ricky Ponting say he cherishes every moment that he gets out there to compete for his country and it’s much the same for us. It might not necessarily be the same as going to a world juniors or Olympics or world champs or something like that, but it’s not to be laughed at.

“You are representing your country and you are going up against some very good junior athletes. And there’s the friendship that you get to create for life with a lot of the athletes from your country and from other countries as well. It’s a wonderful opportunity to see the world doing something you enjoy.”

Persevering through injuries, Surjan captured his second national title in March and, by default, will give his all in the hope of Olympic Games selection next year.

“It was a wonderful experience for me,” he confirmed. “Coming from as well as I did as a junior with long jump, to get to an international calibre competition and not actually win it was probably better for me than winning it. I became so accustomed as a junior - not to sound inflationary or anything - and won a lot of gold medals in the long jump, but to get over there and realise that you can mix it with some of the best athletes in the world, you probably take more out of a loss than what you would out of a win.

“(You become) more professional than what you were in the past and realising that ‘hey, I’m good enough to make a career out of athletics, let’s give it a shot’. For me, getting over there and meeting a lot of different people and experiencing it and probably not jumping the best that I had, but jumping the best that I could in those conditions, was a good thing for me to deal with mentally and physically.”

The word from Mulkearns is that a team of 30 will be selected for Pune with a balance of 15 boys and 15 girls. Two athletes may also be selected for the same event while some event groups may be without an Australian representative.

“It’s about scooping up those 18 and 17 year-old athletes who are a year younger in their development than those who’ll go to Bydgoszcz,” she said. “The World Junior Championships team will be mostly top age kids who will push for top 16, top eight and, for some, hopefully medals.

“The beauty of Pune being an October event means that the athletes selected won’t have to compromise their preparations, training or competitions. They can still enjoy a normal winter.

“It’s a very exciting time for those kids and the junior tier of our sport as a whole.”

From here, athletes aiming for Bydgoszcz or Pune should register their interest in the Commonwealth Youth Games. That can be done here

A quality competition experience? Yes. A life experience? Definitely.

“Often you can get lost in translation with people from other countries but because you are going to a Commonwealth-run (competition), you can meet these people and talk to them,” Surjan said. “I’ve got some very long-standing friends out of South Africa that I would have never met if I hadn’t gone to the Commonwealth Youth Games.”

As Surjan’s career progresses, he’ll hope to cross paths with a few more.

By Steve Lavell