From: kabir@kabir.Eng.Sun.COM (Ihtisham Kabir)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Re: The Joy
Date: 30 Jul 1992 17:25:35 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems
Distribution: world
Reply-To: kabir@kabir.Eng.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: kabir

Haque from Cleveland wrote:
>For your information, as far as I know, Mr. Saidur Rahman Dawn, the fastest
>runner in Bangladesh, died in a car accident a few years back.

It looks like you were mistaken about Dawn's fate, but no matter,
it was a great loss for Bangladesh to lose such a talented runner
as Shah Alam. (Thanks to Anisul Haque and Zunaid Kazi for setting
this straight.)   

>I think what
>he said to the reporter is a fact and there is nothing wrong about that.
>Yes! I think he was proud to make in the Olympics.

I'm sure he was proud. And his response was very elegant. It was
kind of stupid to ask that question, don't you think? It's the same
media whose cameras dwell on the face of a gymnast who is in tears
after a fall, or on a star swimmer who lost unexpectedly. In fact, I
liked the news enough to cut out the clipping and stick it on the
wall of my apartment. Then I had some visitors from Bangladesh
who noticed the clipping and commented that this person was not
the best in Bangladesh. They implied political connections of the
runner was the reason he got selected. Can anyone verify or deny
this?

In any event, anyone as quick-witted as Dawn would probably do
well as a diplomat.

Zunaid Kazi wrote:
>Does anybody know how Shahana fared in her event at the Olympics? From what
>I know of the schedule, her event is complete.

Sorry, no results, but the Bangladesh shooting team does our country
proud. It did very well in the last SAF games, including winning
gold. Its mention caused my mind to wander, so please bear with me:

I don't know the Bangladesh government's strategy regarding the
Olympics. Obviously it is very expensive to train athletes to
come up to an international standard. In light of this expense, a
"RISC" approach to Olympic training could be pursued, ie, picking
only one or two sports that the athletes have shown a particular flair
for, and those that do not cost an arm and a leg to train. Clearly,
shooting is one such event. It doesn't require lots and lots of
expensive facilities (like swimming does, for example.) I am not
advocating that Bangladesh govt abandon all other sports, but that,
if it is at all interested in winning in the Olympics, it handpick
a couple of sports and concentrate on them.

I strongly believe that any such investment will pay off many times
its cost in the future as it helps to repair Bangladesh's badly
damaged international image. (A better image helps get more investment,
more trade, more employment, better living standards, etc.)

The other problem is discipline. Surely, discipline problems plague
more or less every sports team in every country. But for Bangladesh they
hurt more than other countries because we are already trying to painfully
climb a steep hill. A particularly bad example occured during
the last SAF games when we lost to Pakistan in soccer. (The Bangladesh
soccer team is considered better than Pakistan's or India's.) Two versions
of the reason for the loss I heard was that: 1) the athletes became
very nervous in the international arena; and 2) the coach apparently
favored some players who played for the local Dhaka team that he
was also coach for (Brothers?)

I solicit comments and suggestions from netters on these matters 
(of utmost national urgency, of course :-))


- Ihtisham Kabir

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