India athletes need to increase training load for competing with the best: Sumariwalla ahead of Tokyo Worlds
Indian track athletes need to increase their training load if they want to compete with the global elite, said Athletics Federation of India spokesperson Adille Sumariwalla on Sunday as he announced a 19-member contingent for the upcoming World Athletics Championships.
The World Championships is set to be held in Tokyo from September 13 to 21. The Indian squad has 10 athletes who will compete in track events while the rest will take part in field events, including men’s javelin throw defending champion Neeraj Chopra.
American coach Scott Simmons is overseeing the country’s long-distance programme and under him, Gulveer Singh has shown immense improvement with National Records in both 5000m and 10,000m. Citing his example, Sumariwalla said, “The problem is that our athletes were taking a load of 100-120km a week. The load has now been increased to 280km and they’ll have to go over 300km if they have to compete with the best in the world.”
“If you’ve seen Gulveer, he’s improving with every single race he runs. The more you run, the more you improve. The Indian coaches were trying to save the athletes and I don’t know for what but they were trying to save them over and over again and they were never able to perform.”
The country will not have a single quartermiler or any of the relay teams this time. At the recently held National Inter-State Senior Championships in Chennai, Jamaica’s Jason Dawson — coach of the men’s 4x400m relay programme — had complained about interference from Indian coaches in his programme in an emotional outburst soon after Vishal TK set a new 400m National Record of 45.12s and dedicated the feat to him.
The men’s 4x400m team which finished fifth at the last World Championships in Budapest failed to qualify for the finals at the Paris Olympics and has since been disbanded.
“In 400m, there was a load issue. Athletes were not ready to take the load because if you are running 400m, you have to run six or seven times. You have to run individual 400m heats, semifinals and finals. You have to run the 4x400m men’s/women’s relay heats, mixed relay heats and finals. Our athletes were all ‘one race athletes,” said Sumariwalla.
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“When the foreign coach tried to make them two-race or three-race athletes, they didn’t want to take the load. Again, our Indian coaches were trying to save them, and I don’t know for what. So, we have done some structural changes there and you will see the results.
“If you see Vishal, he has improved with every race. He has run 16 (14) races to do what he has done. Our Indian coaches don’t want to make their athletes run races.”
Internal discussion on selection of squads for future events
Sumariwalla also mentioned that the federation is looking at the selection criteria for future World Championships.
Out of the 19 Indians who have qualified for Tokyo, 15 have made the cut through the World Rankings Route.
He said, “There is another thought internally that whether the world championships is somewhere we want to expose everybody or bring them through Asian championships, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games to the World Championship. There is another very strong discussion that anybody who qualifies 50th out of 50 or 56th out of 56, then it’s quite demoralising because if you’re the last person to qualify, then you’ll probably be among the last few to finish. And that could be a big hit to your confidence for the future.”
“Whether we should only let those guys who qualify go (directly) or maybe we keep a qualifying standard at 50 per cent of the ranking is a discussion we are having with Indian coaches, foreign coaches,foreign experts, ex-athletes, etc.”
Published on Aug 31, 2025