Asian Games

National contingent to face a huge cut as stakeholders meet today

By Alam Zeb Safi

KARACHI: A vital meeting of the sports stakeholders will be held at the Olympic House in Lahore on Monday (today) to discuss the strength of the national contingent which will feature in the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia in August and September.

The meeting, which will be chaired by the Pakistan Olympic Association’s (POA) chief Lt Gen (rtd) Arif Hassan, will be attended by the representatives of national federations and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB).

The PSB has told the POA that it wants to reduce the strength of the contingent as the government cannot sponsor more than 140 members for the quadrennial extravaganza slated to be held in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta and Palembang from August 18 to September 2.

Initially, it had been decided that a 397-member contingent would feature in the Asiad out of which around 300 would be financially supported by the Board.

But due to lack of funds the Board seems to have taken a U-turn. The PSB’s decision may spark protest in the ranks of those federations which have worked hard to prepare their sides.

Sources said the PSB intends not to sponsor team sports. This correspondent tried to contact PSB’s senior official Azam Dar but he did not receive the calls.

Pakistan athletes are to feature in 36 disciplines. The Board has already announced that it will not sponsor football, table tennis, gymnastics and basketball.

Because of the issue, Pakistan Basketball Federation (PBBF) has decided not to send its team to Indonesia. The meeting will be held in three groups. The group-1 meeting, which will begin at 12:30pm, will be attended by the representatives of archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, boxing, golf, football, gymnastics and handball.

The group-2 meeting, which will begin at 2pm, will be attended by the representatives of hockey, ju-jitsu, karate, kabaddi, rowing, rugby, sailing, shooting and squash. The group-3 meeting, which will start at 3:30pm, will be attended by the officials of swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, volleyball, weight-lifting, wrestling and wushu.

The federations have been informed that they will have to give presentations in order to highlight the medal prospects of their athletes in the Games. The lack of resources has also damaged the preparation of the national contingent as the Board stopped some of the training camps on May 25. It was only on June 20 that the camps were resumed. The federations had been asked to keep the strength in the camps low.

The Board’s working this year has been affected by various factors. After the retirement of Dr Akhtar Nawaz Ganjera as Director General of PSB in February this year, Amir Ali Ahmed was brought in for three months.

Before the expiry of his brief stint he was removed and Arif Ibrahim was made acting DG Arif, a Grade-21 officer, seems to have failed to run the Board effectively.

The Board had promised that it would send players of a few disciplines abroad to prepare for Asiad. Athletes of wrestling, wushu and boxing were expected to undergo training on foreign soil. But so far no concrete step has been taken in that direction which has sabotaged Pakistan’s medals chances in the Asian Games.

Pakistan have won medals in wushu in the last three Asian Games but this time if the Board failed to give any foreign tour to the fighters of this discipline, the medal chances will be drastically cut.

Football is the only discipline in which Pakistan have been preparing well as Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) is spending its own money. These days national football team is in Bahrain to prepare for the Asian Games. Pakistan is also featuring in the Asian Games in some disciplines whose federations are not affiliated with the PSB and POA.