Behind relay team’s memorable run: New-found belief, taskmaster coach | Sport-others News

After India’s Russian-American 400 metre chief coach, Galina Bukharina parted ways with the Athletics Federation of India abruptly last winter, the quarter-milers were left clueless. Galina had joined the Indian setup at 72 and spent five years forging a solid bond with the runners.
Although closer to the end of her stint the relay teams performances dropped, she was a revered figure among the athletes.
So it was natural the athletes took a while to warm up to Jamaican Jason Dawson, who took over the reins of the 400m camp early this year. But despite the initial resance Dawson earned the athletes’ trust and played a pivotal role in helping the men’s 4x400m dip below the 3-minute mark for the first time when they finished second in their hecoats at the World Championships in Budapest. They clocked another sub-three minutes (2:59:92s) timings in the final to finish fifth. The 4×400 men’s relay team also won gold at the recently concluded Asian Games, adding to their stellar season.
“When I reached here I realised my work was cut out. I got a lot of pushback, a lot of resance and that was actually the hardest part of the work. I knew everything I do here would have never been done before. So there was a lot of resance,” Dawson recalls.

The athletes felt Dawson’s methods were “too tough” for Indians. “A lot of us suffered from injuries. There was a lot of heavy lifting and the load was just too much,” a member of the 400m squad had mentioned earlier this year. But the Jamaican coach wasn’t going to relent. As per his philosophy, pushing hard was the only way to achieve higher targets.
“They always think about injury. So I would say to them the only way to stay injury-free is to retire. There is nothing you can do to avoid injury. If you’re warming up, you can get injured And I do push them. But their biggest fear was they had never done this before. And they were mentally shut down,” Dawson says.
It took a while for Dawson to earn the quarter-milers’ trust with Rajesh Ramesh, who ran the memorable anchor leg at the heats at Worlds, where he momentarily took the lead against the American. “I still don’t remember the exact day when things changed but it began with Rajesh. He showed signs of improvement and that came with the help of senior India relay team coach Premanand. I asked him to talk to him and things improved gradually,” he says.
Soon the rest followed, but Dawson knew it was just the beginning of the journey. Dawson always had set lofty targets for the Indians. One of the major complaints Dawson had was the lack of self-belief of the relay runners. “They set ‘realic targets’ that are sometimes too low. Setting modest targets isn’t good enough. There tends to be a little fear before going out for competition and it is a big issue. They were afraid of athletes challenging them,” he said.
Dawson realised he needed to guide every athlete individually before working with them as a relay team. The Jamaican’s tough-it-out style seems to have worked. Ramesh’s anchor leg at Worlds, where he challenged his American opponent, was an indicator of the Indian team’s renewed belief,Most Read
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“So when Rajesh came from behind to challenge the American, he slightly moved away from the inner line to the other making it difficult to accelerate. And I said to myself, ‘you’re gonna run the run of your life today’. I told Rajesh no matter what happens just keep going. When you leave the track, the nation of India must be smiling,” Dawson says.
The coach feels the bar must go higher from here on. He wants India to be recognised as a respectable competitor on the global circuit. The Jamaican has already drawn up a plan for the team to achieve their next target. For now, it’s a short break.
“Well for me what we have achieved now is not the end and we have to move on to newer heights.”