Wushu washy

One of our least known but most successful sport forms, Wushu is a chinese martial art where one can use weapons such as swords and spears, as also fight without weapons.

The editor thought I was leading him on when I suggested a story on Wushu, and a few other colleagues believed it was a non-existent sport too. Can't blame them.

Wushu has not been in the limelight at all despite doing well at the international level. But now it's in the news for becoming a priority sport for the sports ministry, ahead of even one of our national sports, hockey.

It might come as a surprise to many but for the people associated with the sport, this is a huge step in the right direction. First things first: what exactly is Wushu? It is a Chinese martial art where one can use weapons such as swords and spears, and can also fight without weapons. It is extremely popular in South-east Asia, and has found a considerable following in our country as well.

To enter the priority list of the sports ministry is just the shot in the arm the sport was looking for.

Till now, Wushu has not received much funding from the government, despite doing commendably in various international competitions. Its most recent success was the winning of a bronze medal at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, which finally tilted the authorities' opinion towards the sport.

Says Manish Kacker, joint secretary, Wushu Association of India (WAI), "We have seen some dark days in the last few years but hopefully things would improve with the sport being brought into priority category."

One of the main benefits which Wushu will reap is that the government will now bear the costs of all athletes travelling abroad for competitions. Earlier, the association and the interested participants used to bear the cost on their own.

Currently, there are about 600 participants in Wushu at the national level and they come from various parts of the country, with the north-eastern states predominating. Kacker hopes that the number will increase in the near future.

Personnel from the CRPF and Indian Army have been doing pretty well at the sport. One of the athletes who garnered the bronze medal at Doha, Bimouljit Singh Sandhu from Manipur, has been one of the most consistent performers for the country.

He works with the CRPF and has been practising the art for five years. It is not only men who are doing well, a female athlete from Imphal performed extremely well at the Singapore Wushu championship.

The sport has brought home some 70 medals in various international competitions over the last decade. Kacker attributes the low popularity of Wushu to the lack of a grading or ranking system in the sport.

"Unlike other martial art forms, where you get belts or have grading methods, Wushu has none, so it demotivates people from taking it up." Add to this minimal financial support, and the sport has been confined to the wilderness.

Nevertheless, coaching camps are frequently held and the response to Wushu has been increasing every year. "We have quite a few coaches who have trained at the international level but we hope that now we could get some foreign coaches as well," says Kacker.

Now things are definitely looking brighter. WAI recently signed an MoU with its Chinese counterparts and will soon be sending players for competitions and training programmes in China to be better prepared technically and physically.

While WAI is headquartered in Lucknow, it has training centres in Dimapur, Imphal, Patiala and Jabalpur. The emphasis has been on promoting the sport all across the country and that is why national-level championships are held in cities like Ujjain, Chandigarh and Shimla.

This form of martial art is also an effective fitness method. Some of the metro-city martial arts centres do teach the art but it doesn't yet figure among the most practised. Tai-chi and kick-boxing still rule the roost.

While medals and other prizes have eluded these more popular forms at the international level, Wushu has won plenty of them. According to Kacker, Indians achieving medals at the Wushu junior world championships, and a few at the senior level as well, has been a regular feature.

Wushu will also be one of the demo sports at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and part of the World Martial Arts Games in the same year. Awareness levels about Wushu among the majority of us might be low, but it ranks pretty high in sporting circles as far as achievements are concerned.