The sports lovers across the country while celebrating Hima Das's fifth gold in last one month are baffled why the Indian athletes are not allowed to participate in more competitive Diamond League circuit even if Hima is clocking impressive timings.
The IAAF Diamond League is anannual series of elite track and field athletic competitions. The series beganwith the 2010 IAAF Diamond League. It was designed to replace the IAAF GoldenLeague, which had been held annually since 1998.
As on today, it is being held atLondon where top athletes from across the world including Hima's main rivalSalwa Eid Nasser from Bahrain is competing.
On the contrary, Indian athletes are allowed to run in less competitive East European events of Poland and the Czech Republic where most of the participants are from India and competition is not very intense and international.
The sources close to the teaminformed unofficially that team was deliberately held back as their timingswere not up to the International standard to participate in Diamond league.
But that is not applicable in case of Hima Das who is running in the area of 23:10 sec-23.30 sec in the 200M event and constantly showing improvement.
Although Hima is yet to be in the range of podium finish in any of her events she could have improved her timing with greater competition in Diamond then Cezch republic Grand Prix where the competition was not that high, said a source close to the team management..
In the last two months, the Diamond League held its annual events in Monaco, Lucerne and Palo Alto where 200 m podium finish was between 22.05-22.61 second while Hima's best timing was 23.10 sec but her personal best was 22.50 secs. Hima may have sneaked into podium finish as she is prone to improve her timings with tougher competition. But instead, team management are happy to field her in East European Events.
Similarly, in the 400 m events, the Diamond league's Podium finish range had been between 49.17 sec to 50.88 sec while Hima clocked 50.79 at Jakarta. However, on Saturday night she won the gold with 52.09 sec in her first 400m race of the season. But here too Hima could have improved her timing with a better competition but team management stuck to East European smaller events.
It clearly shows the Indian athletic team management is not keen to expose Hima and others to the main competitive track events of the World and rather allowed them to run of smaller events of East Europe where competition is less and mostly competed by Indian athletes and some local athletes of the host country.
This is noteworthy that Diamond Leauge events are now organised in China, Qatar, Morocco, and the United States besides Europe.
