The district will host a mud football tournament on July 16 and 17 near Malappuram town.
Paddy fields with 15-metre width and 20-metre length and those ploughed well to make them marshy would be the venue of the mud football tournament which is organised by the state tourism department.
A similar kind of tournament that was organised in Malappuram during the last monsoon season was labelled a big success.
The District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC) has started registering teams. The secretary of DTPC, Ummar Koya, said international rules of mud soccer would be amended for regional adaptation.
The duration of a match would be 20 minutes and the minimum age of players has been fixed at 18. The total number of players in a team would be 11, including three substitutes. The winner of the tournament will get cash prize and a certificate.
The tourism department has decided to organise mud soccer every year after the event last year attracted a large number of tourists. The authorities are hopeful that the popularity of football in Malappuram would make the event a success.
The mud football organised in Wayanad as part of the monsoon tourism festival was a big success.
The district administration of Malappuram is also planning to organise panchayat-level mud football tournaments with an aim to popularise the sport among villagers.
Apart from the mud football, the DTPC will also organise rain trips to Nilambur and off-road bike rallies as part of its monsoon tourism programmes in Malappuram.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kozhikode / TNN / July 06th, 2016
Ushering in the new boat race season, Nadubhagam Chundan, rowed by Nadubhagam Boat Club, Champakulam lifted the Raja Pramukhan Trophy of this year’s Champakulam Moolam Boat Race held on the Pampa River here on Monday.
In a pulsating finale, Nadubhagam, one of the most famous snake boats of Kerala, outdid the St Pious Xth Chundan(snake boat) of St Pious Xth Boat Club, Mankombu and Champakulam snake boat of Venice Boat Club, Alappuzha.
Renju Abraham, captian of the winner Nadubhagam Chundan said he and his team are very excited about their victory of this prestigious trophy and dedicated it to all his team members.” Our next aim is to bag the coveted Nehru Trophy Boat Race to be held on Punnamada Lake in August this year,” he said.
In the loser’s finale, Sree Karthikeyan of Junior CBC came at the first position. St Joseph of CBC Chempupuram and Pulinkunnu of Kunnamma Boat Club Kavalam came in second and third positions respectively.
In the ‘Iruttukuthi A grade’ finale(finale of smaller boats), Mammodan of St Mary’s Yuvadeepthi Club, Kainakary came in the first psotion. In `Veppu A grade’ finale, Chethikadan of Warriors Boats Club, Kuttamangalam, Kainakary came in the first position. Kottaparamban of SCDC Boat Club from Kaippuzhamuttu and Asha Pulikkalam of Samudra Boat Club, Kumaarakom finished in second and third positions respectively.
The traditional annual boat race of Kerala begins with Champakulam Boat Race which is also known as ‘MoolamVallamkali’. The other popular boat race that will follow the Champakkulam boat race are Nehru Trophy boat race, Kayamkulam BoatRace, Payipad boat race, the Rajiv Gandhi TrophyBoat Race, Karuvatta, Mannar and Neerattupuram boat races. As many as 6 snake boats took part in the Champakulam Moolam Boat Race on Monday.
Boat race organizing committee general convener and Kuttanad Tahasildar Cheriyan V Koshy said, “In 2014 and 2015, we could not conduct the finals of the snake boats following row among boat clubs over track length. However, this year, we have solved all the complaints related to the track length and we have ensured equal length in three tracks,” said Koshy. This boat race was organized by the district administration in association with Tourism Department and local bodies.
Kuttanad MLA Thomas Chandy inaugurated the boat race. Kayamkulam MLA Prathibha Hari flagged off the boat race.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kozhikode / Sajimon P S / TNN / June 20th, 2016
Babu teaching his nephew how to ride at his academy. (Photo |Ratheesh Sundaram)
Babu Kunnumpuram’s 15-acre lush green farmhouse in Vaniyampara, 100 km from Kochi, is hardly a noticeable one. But behind his modest house, a muddy road leads to open land enveloped by huge trees, where a stable that houses five horses stands. This is Stallion’s Valley Horse Riding Academy, Kerala’s only horse riding school. Babu leads us inside where the steeds of Kathiawari and Marwari breed, sourced from Bengaluru and Mysuru, stand ready to gallop.
Today, the academy is trotting towards a makeover. Babu has sought the Kerala government’s permission to start Green Farm, a tourist resort which will be equipped with adventure rides, trekking, a rifle-shooting course, walk-in aviary of exotic birds and pets, forest and hill camping, a homestay for horses and dormitary facility. The permission is likely to come next month.
“We will develop the academy into a huge tourist destination. The inspection team will be here next week. Some people are willing to invest and a management consultant has been roped in,” says 31-year-old Babu.
It all began in 2010 when Babu bought an English Breed from Mysuru for `50,000. “I learnt riding on my own, but when the prospect of starting a school popped up, I sought the help of Nharoth Ali, a US-trained professional rider currently involved with the Qatar Equestrian Federation. Just like driving, there are certain principles that we need to adhere to while riding a horse,” he says.
As the academy started taking shape, he bought more horses. His first student was Manu Kunnumpuram, his four-year-old nephew. By the time he turned five, Manu was riding the animal with ease, making him the youngest rider in Kerala.
“Classes are for everyone, irrespective of age, but the most important thing is the bond the rider forms with the horse. The first three days of the course is about holding its reins and walking with it. After that I teach the rider to make it trot, canter and finally gallop,” explains Babu.
The videos he uploaded on YouTube drew people to Stallion’s Valley to learn riding. “My oldest student is a 73-year-old from Ireland. People like the natural habitat here. I teach them to ride, and for experienced riders, I provide the animal and the place to ride them,” he says.
The riding academy offers various courses, including the preliminary one that lasts two months to the advanced horse trainer course, which takes a year to complete. The fee structure ranges from `5,000 to `1 lakh.
His farm is on the edge of the reserve area of Peechi Dam, and is enveloped in thick vegetation. “Horses are not comfortable on cement or in artificial surroundings. The rides are on winding muddy tracks on my farm, which resembles the natural habitat of horses,” says Babu. Taking care of a horse is a taxing process that requires patience. They have to be fed special food and medicines, and horseshoes are replaced every 40 days. “Horses are costly to maintain. Two of my horses cost Rs 1.5 lakh each. The other two were for Rs 1.25 lakh, and the young one was for Rs 75,000,” he says.
With more people wanting to learn riding, Babu has started a horse boarding facility. “Many city folk buy horses for the love of the animal, but can’t maintain them on their premises. So they bring them here. Just like the rider needs to be trained, the horses need training too, especially the ones which participate in endurance races,” says Babu, who took part in the Kross Terrain Endurance Ride 2014 in Jodhpur.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Magazine / by Meera Suresh / June 11th, 2016
Sports Hub, the stadium complex in Karyavattom, has been adjudged the winner of the prestigious David Vickers Award under the category of New Venue of the Year.
For the first time, a venue in India has been selected for the recognition at the Stadium Business Awards 2016 that was held at the famed Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, Spain on June 1. The stadium beat other contenders, including Parc Olympique Lyonnais, France; Estadio BBVA Bancomer, Mexico; Kyle Field at Texas A&M University, USA; Matmut Atlantique, France; Suita City Football Stadium, Japan; Vodafone Arena, Turkey; and T-Mobile Arena, USA; for the coveted award.
The judging panel commented, “A very strongly-contested category with international entries but this world-class sports facility is the first privately-funded stadium on the Indian subcontinent and a development model for more to come.” According to sources, the Sports Hub as been designed as a multi-use facility capable of hosting international sporting events of cricket and football. It has been developed by Karyavattom Sports Facilities Ltd. (KSFL), an spv set up by IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Staff Reporter / Thiruvananthapuram – June 04th, 2016
The growing popularity of Kalaripayattu has triggered hopes that the sport form could find a berth in the Olympics sooner than later.
The martial art form, widely practised in Kerala, has quietly grown into a popular sports form among enthusiasts, said V.A. Shiad, national secretary of the Indian Kalaripayattu Federation.
He said that around 1,000 participants from 24 States had arrived in Kochi for the fourth national championship beginning at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in the city. The competitions are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. on Monday.
The national championships got under way in 2013 as a small affair but have grown in popularity. Ranjan Mullaratt, who is the Kalari guru for the 19-member team from Karnataka, said that Kalaripayattu was getting popular in centres like Bangalore. He said that young people were keen to take up the martial art form and it was gaining ground fast.
The popularity of the sports form has spread internationally too. There are registered Kalaripyattu federations in 32 countries now. Once the number of countries with registered federations goes up to 40, the Kalaripayattu can vie for space in the Olympics competitions.
The national championships are conducted under age categories and there are separate sections of competitions such as Meypayattu, Chuvadu, Urumi, Vaalpayattu, freehand fight and Vadipayattu.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / May 23rd, 2016
Everyone expects that an athlete would have zeroed in on his favourite event by the time he turns 18. But for 17-year-old Sreeshankar M, it was only a few months ago that he realised he was as good at running as he was at long jumps.
Let’s fast forward to Monday. The athlete’s on the podium after setting a new meet record in 100m race in the 6th Olympian Suresh Babu memorial Kerala State Youth Athletics Championship here. And the icing on the cake was that the youngster repeated the same feat in long jump too.
“It was after a long gap that he turned out for 100m race, in fact it is for the first time since the under-12 competitions,” said his father S Murali, who doubles up as his coach. Sreeshankar has sports running through his veins with father Murali, a silver medalist in triple jump at the 1987 South Asian Games, and mother K S Bijimol, an Asian medalist in 800m.
Murali revealed it was through pure chance that he found out his son is also a very good runner. “I recorded his times during sprint training for long jump and surprisingly the speed was excellent. That was when it dawned on me,” said the Southern Railways employee. The youngster’s performance was not that good at the State Youth Meet compared to the Federation Cup Junior Athletics Meet, which was held last week in Bengaluru, but Murali blames the tight schedule of the athletics calendar for it.
“He had to appear for 100m heats at 5 pm, participate in the long jump finals at 6 and then run the 100m finals just after 7 pm. He even had a strained hamstring to deal with,” Murali said. “People just look at the statistics and say his performance has dipped. But these factors also have to be considered,” he said.
Sreeshankar has the national youth meet, which is to take place later this month at the Calicut University Stadium, to look forward to. However, he is disappointed to have missed out on the world youth championship by a whisker. “He leapt 7.41m at Bengaluru, but missed out on the mark. We will come back stronger next year,” Murali said.
The Rising Star
Hailing from Palakkad, Sreeshankar is the son of former athletes S Murali and K S Bijimol
The 17-year-old broke two meet records on the opening day of the state youth athletics meet at Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium
Sreeshankar cleared 7.25 metres in long jump and timed 11.08 seconds in 100 metres race
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Adwaidh Rajan / May 10th, 2016
The multi-purpose indoor sports facility at the Sports Hub in Kariavattom
Thiruvananthapuram :
India’s legendary leg-spinner Anil Kumble is all set to strengthen his Kerala connection when he launches the Karyavattom Sports Facilities Limited (KSFL) – Tenvic Sports Coaching Academy at The Sports Hub, Kariavattom here on April 20.
The 45-year-old, whose ancestors hail from the village of Kumbla in Kasargod district, has inked a deal with KSFL, the operators of the sports facility, to bring the Tenvic Academy, he co-founded with former national table tennis champion Vasanth Bharadwaj, to Kerala.
Tenvic, inspired by Kumble’s rare ten-wicket haul against Pakistan at the Ferozeshah Kotla in 1999, will offer coaching in cricket and football in the first phase by utilising the Greenfield International Stadium, the multi-purpose indoor stadium and its premises for children aged between seven and 18 years.
According to officials, training programmes in other sports including badminton, basketball, tennis, table tennis, volleyball, squash, and swimming will follow suit. Meanwhile, the enrolment for cricket and football will close on April 15.
Apart from the international stadium that conforms to FIFA and ICC standards, the academy will also function on three basketball, three volleyball, 12 badminton and 20 table tennis courts at the facility.
“This is one of the best sports infrastructure available in the country. But to create talents, professional coaching is needed. We can help kids in Kerala to take forward their sporting aspirations. We will move the kids up through various levels based on our curriculum,” said Ravi Kumar, representative of Tenvic, announcing the deal.
Tenvic’s curriculum is formed based on suggestions from sports’ elites including Prakash Padukone, V V S Laxman, Muttiah Muralidharan and Aakash Chopra among others.
They will be coached by Tenvic certified professional coaches. Other highlights of the academy include continuous monitoring and assessment by a dedicated coordination team.
An online ‘Academy Management System’ will help the Tenvic academies to deploy online software for program tracking, capturing and reviewing physical attributes etc.
For more details contact 9497714008, 9497714732 or 0471 7105011.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Express News Service / April 09th, 2016
“Chess is everything; art, science and sport.” So said Russian grandmaster Anatoly Karpov once, and the Capablanca Chess School, the new centre in the city offering professional training in the game of chess, will base its tutoring upon this theory.
“Though there are several coaching centres across the country for chess, ours is the first-of-its-kind which attempts to promote chess at grassroots level. Incorporating yoga, meditation and counselling into the professional training programme, we aim at overall cognitive and psychological development of every student,” says Vijin Babu, one of the three founders of the chess school. Mayor V K Prasanth inaugurated the school on Wednesday.
Though the founders expect a major chunk of their students to be children, adults are also welcome. The two-hour classes will be split into an hour for teaching chess skills followed by an hour of game to put the newly acquired skills to practice.
“Chess is like mathematics. If you learn the right tricks in an interesting way, you can master it. Every great chess player has in some way received professional training which has helped him approach the game scientifically. We, here, will help the students in understanding the notations, theory and the language of the game,” Babu, who is also a district level champion and national player, said. As a part of the curriculum, the school will conduct regular tournaments where students will face players from across the state, he added.
Two-time state champion Sreekumar P will be the principal, and the school will have three permanent faculty members and several guest lecturers. “I have an experience of over 20 years in teaching chess. Studies have revealed that a well-trained chess player will have better memory retention and cognitive ability,” he said. Chess players are eligible for grace-marks at school and PSC examinations, which makes it an even more worthwhile game to pursue, he added.
There will be regular weekday and weekend batches at the school, which is situated Kochulloor.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Thiruvananthapuram / TNN / April 01dt, 2016
Twenty-five years after Jose Michael, a native of Nadakavu in Kozhikode, who travelled along with his friend from Kozhikode to Europe on a bicycle in the late 80’s, the 51-year-old will pedal from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasargod to reminisce about his bicycle days in Europe.
Setting out on a voyage to Europe in 1987, at the age of 26, he covered Greece, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Netherlands within a period of three years. “Though such trips are mostly planned, we had no planning at all. We had only one goal– to reach Europe. Initially, we really doubted if we could complete the mission. Memories from the trip are still fresh”, Jose recalls.
Joseph penned the duo’s experience during their fun-filled voyage to the western world in his book titled, ‘Simple Sense’, which was published recently by Blue Berry publications.
In the travelogue, he has detailed the adventurous trip he took with his friend, Alex James, who was also from Kozhikode. “The book happened only because of my friend’s encouragement,” he said.
In his twenties, Jose had a strong desire to settle in the western world. Although he knocked the doors of many embassies, he couldn’t achieve his goal.
Finally the idea struck him to get a bicycle and go on a world tour. The next challenge on his way was to find a sponsor and a companion for the voyage.
Rotary club of Calicut Midtown sponsored the mission titled ‘The Rotary friendship mission to Europe’.
During the trip, they had to encounter many physical and mental hardships. However, they fought the odds to reach the destination. Jose also went on an all India tour on his bicycle in 1995.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by Express News Service / March 22nd, 2016
Athira Sasi, of Alphonsa College, Pala, who won gold in women’s 1,500 m race in the Ninth College Games 2015 at SAI-LNCPE, Kariavattom in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday | B P Deepu
Thiruvananthapuram :
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday said the success of Kerala athletes in the 35th National Games has proved that they can scale great heights with confidence and hard work.
Chandy was speaking at the valedictory function of the 9th College Games 2015 held at the Sports-Authority of India – Lakshmibai National College of Physical Education (SAI-LNCPE) in Kariavattom.
“Kerala is adopting all possible measures to help its sportspersons to train and perform. In the last four year, the state government has spent around Rs 18 crore on complimentary prizes for athletes and around 300 athletes have been recruited under the sports quota to government services,” he said.
“We are in the final stages of giving jobs to another 150 athletes who made Kerala proud in the last National Games,” he said. “The National Games was a huge challenge organisation-wise as well as sporting-wise and we have proved ourselves,” he said. Chandy congratulated the Kerala State Sports Council and participants of the College Games for the success of the three-day event. “I hope all the athletes will be able to come up to expectations,” he said.
Sports Council president Padmini Thomas said the quality of the Games has increased this year with the sheer number of new meet records set. “I am happy that plenty of those records were broken by trainees from the Council’s college hostels,” she said.
The Chief Minister distributed prizes to the winners of the College Games, including to the overall winners Assumption College, Changanassery, who defended their Games title. Assumption were also champions in the women’s section while St Thomas College, Pala, took the honour in the men’s division. The closing ceremony also featured a band display from students of Sainik School, Kazhakootam and a march-past by the participating teams.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Express News Service / September 12th, 2015
