Usha hopes to produce Olympic medal-winner

An Olympic gold medal may have eluded 'Payyoli Express' P T Usha, but the former Indian sprint queen is confident of producing a medal-winning athlete from her academy, established at a cost of Rs 330 million, at Quilandy in Kerala, in the next ten years.

Talking to newsmen after inaugurating the Velammal Prime Sports Academy, set up by the Velammal Matriculation Higher Secondary school in Chennai, Usha, who missed an Olympic bronze medal by one hundredth of a second at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, said: "Since I missed the Olympic medal by a whisker, I am very keen to produce a medal-winning athlete."

Twenty-five promising athletes from different parts of the country have been selected for training at the academy.

"In ten years from now, at least one of them would win a medal in the Olympics," declared India's golden girl, who, in 1986 at the Seoul Asian Games, won gold medals in the 200 metres, 400 metres, 400 metres hurdles and 4x400 metres relay.

Saying Indian coaches are best suited to train the athletes, Usha added that foreign coaches can only produce results if they train children from the beginning.

To a question, Usha said she was clean of drugs right through her career which spanned more than two decades, and asserted that such malpractices would never surface in her academy.

She urged the athletes to work hard and dedicate themselves to achieve their goal.

Earlier interview
'I missed an Olympic medal, now I want to ensure that one of my students wins one'