Two-year-old Aradhya Vedwan and 6-year-old Anoop Skanda, both residents of Chennai, have created unique records in the realm of children in sports. The former has been titled the world’s youngest archer, and was awarded Bronze for ‘Recurve Archery’ at the under-10 category. The latter won gold in the complex ‘Compound Archery’ category, making him the youngest in the world to hold the type of bow at any recognised event. They returned home after bagging medals at the National level archery competition conducted by the Archery Association of India at Vishakapatnam last week.
The two young awardees and record-setters were felicitated at their Archery training institute run by Shihan Hussaini. “Its not everyday when your student makes you so proud. That too children at such a tender age picking up an art like archery, its the best moment for a teacher like me,” he said at a press meet on Saturday at his ‘Dojo’ (institute).
6 YEAR OLD ANOOP SKANDA WAS AWARDED A GOLD MEDAL BY THE ARCHERY ASSOCIATION OF INDIA, DURING THE PRESS MEET ORGANISED BY SHIHAN HUSSAINI. EXPRESS/ MARTIN LOUIS. AMRUTHA STORY.
The two archers both skilfully demonstrated their shooting techniques with their respective bows, to the watching audience after being felicitated along with their parents who have also been training alongside them. “One parent is expected to train alongside the child, to act as a parent coach. It becomes like an addiction even for us,” says Ashwin Kumar, father of Anoop.
The class one student showed-off his skill in handling the complex and hefty ‘compound’ bow which his master declared has “never been held by a 6-year-old anywhere in the world. He even practices for 15 hours a day,” say his proud parents, who accompany him from Valasaravakkam to Besant Nagar for classes.
The other star of the show, Aradhya had picked up a plastic bow and arrow when she was just a year old – “there was no looking back after that,” say her mother Abhilasha, and father Kuldeep, national-level archers themselves. “She’s a very young child, so we didn’t know if she would listen if we told her to shoot. But upon seeing the crowd, she took aim and shot it right at the target,” said Hussaini.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Tamil Nadu / by Express News Service / February 07th, 2016
About eight years ago, a young man from a village in Dharmapuri district set out to Chennai to meet Shihan Hussaini. He had seen the flamboyant karate master talking about archery on television. It had set off a spark in him and he wanted to become a champion archer like Limba Ram- though till that point of time he had not touched a bow or arrow in his life. In Chennai, Shihan agreed to train him free of cost in his archery academy, and later, noting his extraordinary talent advised him to join the army to receive advanced training.
Shihan’s protégé has done him proud. After winning a gold in the Asian Championship last year, he bagged a silver medal in the team event at the recent Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. At 28 years of age, C Srither, is now eyeing a gold medal at next year’s World Championship.
But for Shihan (left), Commonwealth Games silver medallist in archery, Srither (right), would not have scaled the heights he has reached now
Spurred on by Srither’s success, Shihan – who is also an official at the Tamil Nadu Archery Association – has now embarked on a project to create more archery champions from Tamil Nadu. He calls it, Mission Olympics – 2016. “We are planning to conduct a free 2-day archery workshop in all the districts to identify talents to be trained for winning a medal in the 2016 Olympics,” he says.
Shihan, 52, is a popular karate instructor in Chennai. He has also been an actor, artist, and at one time even headed a private security bureau. He has trained thousands in karate, many of whom have received black belt. He shot into limelight in the early 1990s when he created a bizarre feat to grab the attention of the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa for donating land for his karate school. He had 100 cars run over his right hand, and then smashed 5000 tiles and 1000 bricks with the same hand before sketching Jayalalithaa’s portrait with the blood that flowed from his hand.
He had run into trouble with the earlier DMK regime (1996-2001), when police raided his home and seized many articles including the Jayalalithaa portrait – which till date remains untraced. He was once arrested in New Delhi on charges of travelling on a forged passport, and had to spend a few weeks at Tihar jail. “I have been acquitted in all the cases that were registered against me and today I am a free man,” he says.
Shihan attributes his travails to the general perception that he is a Jayalalithaa man, hinting at political vendetta. “It’s a wrong perception. I don’t belong to any party and I have met Jayalalithaa only twice in my life,” he says.
But the pro-Jayalalithaa label stuck harder on him early this year when Jayalalithaa gave Rs.2 lakhs to Srither for buying archery equipment responding to Shihan’s appeal. The Tamil Nadu government had ignored his pleas.
Meanwhile, Srither is grateful to the support he had received from Shihan. “He taught me the basics of archery,” he reminisces. In those days, Srither, who hails from a very poor family, used to sleep in the garage at Shihan’s house and train for hours daily in order to achieve his dream. As Shihan says, “Normally, one would get tired shooting for two or three hours. But he used to train from morning till evening.”
source: http://www.theweekendleader.com / The Weekend Leader / Home> Success /by P C Vinoj Kumar, Chennai / February 09th, 2016
