No 400m track on Lakshadweep; just 2 weekly ships to reach mainland for competitions: youth nat’l heptathlon champion Mubbsina Mohammed’s story
Staff, 2022-09-19 09:32:04,
When Lakshadweep’s Mubssina Mohammed won the long jump gold at the National Youth Championships on Sunday, her mom was over the moon. “Bhayngra, bhayngra (very, very) happy,” Dubina Bhanu said in a tone that matched the excitement of winning a World level medal. But for Mubssina, who comes from a place that doesn’t even have a 400m track, let alone a synthetic surface, the achievement is no mean feat.
A day after winning Lakshadweep’s first ever national-level athletics medal (long jump gold), 16-year-old Mubssina (4649 points) finished first in heptathlon at the ongoing Youth National Championships in Bhopal. The prodigious teenager has now qualified in both events for the Asian Youth Championships to be held in Kuwait next month.
Mubssina was first spotted by coach Ahmed Jawad Hassan, a Lakshadweep Youth and Sports Affairs official and coach, during a sports festival in the Minicoy islands. The youngster was a middle- and long-distance runner back then. “She had the quality of a good long jumper and that is why I asked her to switch. She had that explosiveness in her strides,” says a proud Hassan who is also the secretary of the Lakshadweep athletics association.
Athletics is never a first choice among boys in football-loving Lakshadweep. The handful of youngsters that train under Hassan had to be coaxed into trying the sport. For women, it is a battle to convince their parents.
“The boys hardly show any interest. Even at zonal level events, only girls…
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