FIJI Finals 3000 metres record holder Isireli Naikelekelevesi says there have been changes seen at the Coca-Cola Games over the years.
The long-distance runner set the 3000m record back in 1995 with a time of nine minutes and 6.20 seconds.
He says there have been many changes, some good and some bad.
“I think there a lot of changes. There are some good changes and there are some bad changes. If I go with the good changes, it is that everything is modern. The running track, probably better running spikes, better diet and coaching,” he said.
He added that records standing for long was not a good sign.
“The only bad thing I can see, if my record still stand for nearly 30 years, that shows that the competition is not that tough.
“People are not training like the way we were training in old school way. We just did BHW which meant just bloody work hard. If children, these days don’t work hard then some of those record won’t go down.”
Naikelekelevesi represented Marist Brother’s High School and later went on to represent Fiji at two Olympic Games, two Commonwealth Games, two World Championships and five Oceania Championships in the 800m, 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m events.
He still holds the national records for the 800m and the one-mile distances.
“Competition wise, I won’t say they are very impressive as we saw most of these guys made it to the Pacific Games and we saw at the Pacific Games that they didn’t do really well and that is the result of what we put ourselves into.”
The Coke Games begin today with the first event at 9.30am being the Junior girls high jump final.
The first event on the track will be the Suib-Junior girls 1500m final at 9.37am.
