While Indian athletes are virtually confined to their rooms and training in the corridor in national camps, Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi has been working out on a tennis court back home despite his country being one of the worst hit in the coronavirus pandemic.
“Everything is locked down but I have a tennis court where I put a mat and I'm jumping and doing everything,” said the 2016 indoor World champion in an Instagram chat session with Qatar's World champion Mutaz Essa Barshim on Sunday night. “I'm training but I don't know for what.”
Things had been going fine for Barshim in Doha for the last six weeks and only now, his training has hit some hurdles.
“I started a little earlier than a month, I was coming okay. But they closed the track yesterday, now we have a grass field, where we do running and some small jumps but there's no access to the track,” said Barshim, the 2016 Rio Olympics silver medallist and the IAAF's World Athlete of the Year in 2017.
The uncertainty over everything has been agonising.
“I don't think there is going to be any competition (this year). If there's no target, it is difficult to find motivation,” explained Barshim.
“Olympics was the biggest thing, I thought I need to push myself but now, there's no Olympics so I think, what am I going to focus on now.”
NO SPORT WITHOUT PEOPLE
There is now talk that meets could be held behind closed doors when the international circuit opens and Barshim does not like the idea one bit.
“I like to jump in a full stadium...in an empty stadium, it will be like training. You need the people, there is no sport without people,” said Barshim in reply to a question from this writer.
The Qatari, the planet's second best high jumper ever who is just two centimetres behind Cuban Javier Sotomayor's 1993 world record of 2.45m, feels that Ukraine's Bohdan Bondarenko would pose a tough challenge in the Tokyo Olympics next year.
“I think Bondarenko is strong mentally. He has been doing great jumps so many times. I believe if he comes back injury free, he will do great,” said Barshim.
The chat revealed that nine high jumpers from the 2016 top list had suffered injuries or had surgeries in the last couple of years.
“High jump takes so much pressure on the body. Sometimes people don't understand, I want to jump but I am not able to sometimes because my body needs time to recover,” said Barshim who hopes to become Qatar's first-ever Olympic champion next year.
He revealed that Sotomayor and Swede Patrik Sjoberg, the No. 1 and 3 in the all-time list, were his favourites. “When they competed, their rivalry was really great,” said the star who had done the long jump and triple jump in his school days.
Croatia's Blanka Vlasic is his favourite high jumper among women and his favourite event in athletics is the 400m hurdles.
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