My best is yet to come, says Anju

MUMBAI: To most of us, Anju George finishing ���only��� fifth at the World Athletics Championships was a major disappointment. At 28, perhaps a few are ready to ���finish" off her career too.
Anju, however, is far from being disillusioned. "I"m capable of doing better, I know that," she said. "My best is yet to come."
Her best yet has been the 6.83 metres at the Olympics last year which saw her finishing sixth.At Helsinki on Wednesday, she jumped her year"s best of 6.66m to finish fifth. Two years ago at the Paris Worlds, Anju jumped 6.70m to become the first Indian to win a medal at the World Championship.
"Don"t write her off yet," warned husband-coach-masseur-psychologist and one-man cheering team, Bobby. "She"s got tremendous fighting spirit. Anju will continue as long as she wants to."
At Athens last year, all the three medallists went over 7 metres, a distance that Bobby claims Anju often does in practice. At Helsinki, the winning leap was 6.89m by 19-year-old American Tianna Madison who left experienced and technically superior jumpers like Russian Tatayana Kotova and France"s Eunice Barber in her wake.
Anju, ranked No. 5 in the world, doesn"t think that it"s a constant catching up game with the world. "That"s hardly the case," she said. "One has to put the best effort on a particular day to win."
Argues Bobby, "Tatyana Kotova"s best is 7.42m. But that doesn"t mean she can clear 7m everytime. On Wednesday she cleared only 6.79m."
At Helsinki on Wednesday, the conditions were far from conducive. It was raining constantly, wind was howling and shifting constantly and the cold was unbearable. It prompted Kotova to say, "I wanted to have a bottle of vodka to warm me up. All of us would run faster after our jump than on the runway,"" said Anju. "The effort was to get into warm clothes. Had I put in as much effort as I did her at the Olympics, I would have won a medal."
"Winning a medal at the Olympics was our dream. Not winning here is not a disappointment. In fact, all of India should be proud that Anju has shown tremendous fighting spirit and sustained herself for more than two years on the circuit. This, without a doctor, masseur, psycholgist. We have had a lot of limitations." said Bobby.