Judged on camera: Maharashtra Wushu Association hosts an online competition to keep athletes engaged

The nation-wide lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak has brought sports to a halt and administrators are trying to find innovative ways to keep the players engaged and competitive.

The Maharashtra Wushu Federation on Tuesday launched their first State-level online Wushu-Taolu competition and the performances would be considered for selections to the national events.

“It is difficult to keep the players motivated to train when there is no competition. So the idea of conducting such an event came during one of our on-line training sessions,” Maharashtra Wushu Association general secretary Sopan Katke told Scroll.in.

The Wushu Association of India also discussed the idea during its AGM and have asked other state federations also to conduct such events.

Over 150 players have registered for participation in the three-day event with Sandip Shelar, Nilesh Walimbe, Bhushan Marathe and Pratiksha Shinde acting as the four judges.

The players have been told to perform the act only in their house and anyone performing on the terrace or in the area outside their house will be disqualified, according to Katke.

“We are holding competition in only bare hands and small apparatus events since using the bigger apparatus at home could be difficult due to space constraints,” said Katke.

The players also have to perform just one of the four segments that normally constitute the one and half minute performance in regular competition and will live stream the performance on the Zoom Cloud meeting app for the judges to watch.

Explaining the judging process, Walimbe said the players were first explained how to place the camera while performing so that they can get a clear view of the performance. “A few days before the event, we also did a few mock sessions to see how exactly things will work and we felt that we could judge the performances with just one static camera.”

The performances will be marked for Quality of Movement and Overall performance and the winners’ prize would be despatched to their respective homes.

Following on Maharashtra’s footsteps, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu would be holding such competitions while the WAI is also planning an All-India meet in the near future.

On-line competitions were recently conducted in shooting by a private academy but this would be a first attempt by the federation to conduct an official meet online.