PSB plan meeting with POA to discuss Asian Games

KARACHI: Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) plans to hold a meeting with the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) in the next few days in order to discuss matters relating to the 19th Asian Games which are pencilled in for September 23 to October 8 in Hangzhou, China.

“After consulting with the IPC minister we will go for a meeting with the POA soon in order to discuss with the NOC various matters relating to the Asian Games,” a senior official of the PSB told 'The News' on Saturday.

Some camps are already in operation in various parts of the country. But the Board plans to halt them on January 31 and onwards Asian Games-specific camps will be held across the country.

The PSB officials said that after discussing disciplines and other issues of major importance with the POA the Board will also then hold separate meeting with all those federations who will be fielding their athletes in the quadrennial extravaganza. The Asian Games were slated to be held in China last year but faced one-year postponement because of the Covid-related issues.

A senior PSB official said that the camps for the Asian Games will begin in the next 20 days.

“Hopefully these will begin inside the next 20 days,” the official said. “We will give the camps to federations in centres which suit them more. All these things will be decided after they will be consulted at the meeting,” the official said.

“Still we have held camps in a few disciplines and they definitely also help the respective disciplines in their Asian Games preparation as well,” the official said.

The 18th Asian Games hosted by Indonesia in 2018 did not go well for Pakistan with the nation only lifting four bronze which came in athletics, kabaddi, karate and squash.

The PSB official said that every effort will be made to provide quality training facilities to the athletes so that they could prepare well for the vital assignment.

“Yes we will do everything within our budget to back the athletes in terms of training and other facilities which they will need. We will ask the federations what kind of support they will need. If they need foreign tours or foreign coaches we will try to fulfill their demands if there is room for it,” the official said.

“Look, if our athletes feature in the Imam Reza event in Iran they also opt for some training opportunities there and even Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF) has availed training opportunities for its athletes for few days on foreign tours. So its also a sort of training opportunities on foreign soil which our athletes are already availing,” the official said. “Yes we will look how much we can back the athletes in their training,” the official was quick to add.

He said that the PSB has already recommended extension to four foreign coaches, adding if any federation needs foreign coach the case will looked into keeping in view the kind of requirement.

However, the official also stressed that federations also should benefit of the presence of foreign coaches which have been hired by the state and prepare their own coaches so that it could help the authorities in future.

Meanwhile, sources told 'The News' that the PSB should do the things vigorously as other nations have been preparing for the competitions.

“You need to meet each and every deadline of the organisers and our coordination should be very good in every respect which is the only way to get the things done timely,” the source said.

The Games features 61 sporting disciplines, including the 33 which featured at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, as well as six from the Paris 2024, two put forward by the Local Organising Committee (LOC), and a sport from each of Asia's five regions.

E-sports has also been included for the first time in the slots. Hangzhou will be the third Chinese city to host the event after Beijing hosted the Games in 1990 and Guangzhou in 2010.