Badminton coach lashes out at PSB for poor planning

KARACHI: International badminton coach Raziuddin Ahmed on Tuesday lashed out at National Sports Federations and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) for not adopting a “competitive strategy” ahead of this year’s Asian Games, saying success can never be achieved with the ill-planned training camps.

“Success never comes with ill-planned training camps,” Razi told ‘The News’ in an interview. “With the Asian Games just five months away national federations and PSB have not yet designed a training programme, which is ridiculous,” Razi added.

“Devising a competitive strategy for an international event is not a joke. Our federations needed to organise macro-cycles along with micro-cycle training periods to build an athlete one year before the actual competition where training volume and training intensity matters to develop the athlete in all fitness components and the relevant game skills,” Razi pointed out.

“You cannot benefit of the peak point of a player with an orthodox training schedule. The high-performance level is built by altering training during the last one to two weeks before the important competition. Therefore, holding ill-planned training camps will just be a wastage of time, money and it will also be damaging for the athletes,” Razi said.

He said if the authorities have already designed joyrides to China then no one can stop them. “On the other hand if you are a patriot and want to bring laurels for the country then you have to follow the training principles that cannot be changed,” Razi stressed. “National athletes are not being put in a serious training mode before any international event.