Boxed-in Tintu scrapes through, semifinals today

It's an understatement to say that P T Usha feels extremely protective about her protégé Tintu Luka, who is set to run the 800 m semifinals at the London Olympics after sneaking through the heats with a time of 2.01.75 today.

But Usha will not be able to do much should Tintu tie herself up in knots like she did during the heats. The prospect of a repeat is scary.

Second to start in her first lap, Tintu got boxed in by her competing runners, some of them literally breathing down her neck from three sides. Heading into the home stretch, and quite unaccustomed to this routine trickery of the 800 m, the 23-year-old blundered by moving far out, and spent the straight course making up time for this needless detouring loop. At the finish line, Tintu was forced to lunge desperately to keep out Moroccan Malika Akkaoui, and a near disaster was averted as she came in third to qualify for the semis tomorrow.

"She's not used to big races. She shouldn't have drifted far out just to get out of the box. Today was fine, it was only the heats, but she has to be smarter tomorrow and I'm glad she preserved energy for the semis," said Usha. "If she hadn't had to cover that curve on the outside, she'd have been at least a second faster," said the coach, adding that Tintu is well-equipped for the semis on form.

Big races teach you how to manoeuvre out of a tricky, limiting box, but big international platforms have been scarce for the Kerala runner. "We need a good agent who can get us high-standard races," said Usha, adding that as far as preparation goes, Luka could have done with a few more top-level Europe runs before the Olympics.

... contd.

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