With the Asian Games set to open in Saturday, poor accommodation and operational issues have marred the preparations

The Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games will open on Saturday, but poor accommodation and operational issues have been hogging the limelight. The organisers have defended the arrangements, but as athletes, support staff and contingent officials arrive in Japan, complaints about accommodation and logistics are pouring in. It has emerged as a major challenge for the local organising committee to resolve these issues with the Games 24 hours away..

Pictures of tired Indian athletes, either waiting or sleeping on the floor at the crowded Nagoya airport, have emerged. “After two days of being awake and 10 hours of waiting, I was given a room,” MMA player Varun Sanyal, who is competing in the men’s traditional 77kg weight class, posted on X.

“I fell asleep for a grand total of 30 minutes before being woken up by two Indian athletes. Turns out, they were assigned this room but are now stranded,” he said.

“There is lot of chaos with regards to the athletes rooms and assigning of rooms. I am caught up with all of this and still not solved…,” he said in a video, detailing the issues he faced.

A two-member Indian team is participating at the Games. Suchika Taryal is the other player in women’s traditional 60kg. The organising committee has not created a conventional Games Village. Instead, it has adopted a decentralised model, citing cost savings and environmental considerations. Athletes and team officials are being accommodated in existing hotels, a large cruise ship called Costa Serena, and temporary container accommodations.

About 4,000 athletes and officials are expected to stay on the cruise ship docked at Nagoya Port. Another 2,000 are being accommodated in containers modified into living quarters.

“While the accommodations are in much better condition than those at the container-based Garden Pier village, athletes staying aboard the cruise ship will have to spend virtually all of their time living on the water during the Games, while also facing poor access to competition venues,” according to a report in The Korea Times.

“It takes an hour and a half by car to get to the training or competition venues. The accommodations are also so far from downtown that it is difficult to access basic amenities,” the report added.

South Korea’s men’s basketball squad has complained about the cramped space in the container accommodations, with shared toilets and showers. “Critics have questioned whether the allocation adequately takes into account the physical characteristics of basketball players, whose average height is around 2 metres,” the report said.

EOM