In the past three months, Indian athlete Y Muhammed Anas improved the national record twice. That is one reason why the 400-metre sprinter from Kerala’s Kollam district is a top promise in the upcoming Asian Games at Indonesia.
If he strikes true form again, the 23-year-old athlete can once more prove why he is fondly called ‘Nilamel Express’ after his native town, 45 km north of the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram.
Anas, 5 feet 10 inches tall, is a star Indian participant at four events in the 18th Jakarta-Palembang Asiad: 200 m and 300 m, besides 4x400 m relay and 4x400 mixed relay. Well, the list for the relays doesn’t get finalised this early.
For one month now, Anas and fellow athletes are training in Czech Republic under veteran Russian coach Galina Bukharina. Those taking classes under the 72-year-old, who had competed for the Soviet Union as a 100 m runner at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, include teenaged sprinter Hima Das from Assam. It is from that camp in Prague that the 18-year-old from Nagaon’s Dhing went to Finland for the IAAF World Under-20 Championship and won gold for her country.
As for Anas, it was in Czech Republic itself that the Indian bettered his national record by clocking 45.24 seconds at a meet last month. The practice at Prague continues to go well, Anas tells Manorama Online. “When I go by my coach’s suggestions, there are marked improvements,” he says, ahead of the 16-day Indonesia Olympics beginning on August 18. “I feel optimistic about Jakarta. Hope the conditions on the day of the competition favour me.”
Luck didn’t work in favour of Anas at the Commonwealth Games at Australia’s Gold Cost this April: he lost bronze by 0.20 seconds. It missed him a chance to run again into the record books of Indian athletics, which he has been doing in the past couple of years.
At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Anas was just the third Indian — after Milkha Singh and K M Binu — to run in the 400m race. At this year’s Commonwealth, he became only the second Indian to enter the finals of the same event.
His country now awaits Anas to continue his sizzle on the Jakarta tracks.
