Indian athletes at World University complain about official apathy and several issues on the ground.
Navneet Singh
Issues of official apathy at the ongoing World University Games in Germany highlights that university sports should be streamlined to lay a good foundation of the Indian sports ecosystem.
The Indian contingent for the July 16 to 27 World University Games in Germany was selected by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU). The AIU also demanded Rs 2.5 lakh per students for the International competition.
However, issues of alleged favouritism to include officials in the Indian contingent for surfaced before the departure of the team and continued to impact performance of the Indian athletes on the ground in Germany.
Issue of official negligence further gained credence when a badminton player allegedly blamed officials for not registering her name for the badminton team event at the World University Games in Germany.
As the games progressed the issue of mismanagement has spread out to track and field.
Devyaniba Zala, it has emerged, couldn’t compete in an individual 400m in Germany. Sanjay Garnaik, head coach of the athletics team told Sportsbackstory.com from Germany that Devyaniba was a member of 4x400m relay team and wasn’t registered for individual event. “Two main 400m runners—Rupal Chaudhary and Kiran Pahal—both registered for individual race pulled out of the event. We proposed the name of Devyaniba, but the organisers refused,” Garnaik claimed.
On Seema, a student of KIIT University missing women’s 10,000m, Garnaik said it was due to technical issue her name couldn’t be registered for the race. “Seema will be competing in the 5,000m,” the athletic coach added.
One of the badminton player and member of the Indian team in Germany, said a qualified badminton coach should have been with the team. The badminton selection trials were held in Bhubaneswar to select the team for World University Games and a coach was also shortlisted.
But the coach didn’t accompany the team because of financial resources as the AIU had demanded Rs 2.5 lakh for the international tour to Germany.
“Those officials accompanying the team are enjoying the hospitality while the players are doing all the running around. We don’t know where the officials were as the players had to make arrangements for practice and shuttles,” one of the badminton players told Sportsbackstory.com from Germany.
“As per the list of the AIU badminton coach Umendra Singh Rana was shortlisted to accompany the Indian badminton team but he didn’t travel to Germany. But those officials named with the badminton team weren’t keen to overseeing day to day issues of the players,” another player from Germany said.
Binu George Varghese, who replaced Baljit Singh Sekhon as AIU’s secretary sports wasn’t available for his comment on the Indian players facing hardship due to official apathy.
“Sports at the university level is supposed to lay a solid foundation of the promising players before they graduate to a highly competitive senior level,” said one of the officials accompanying the team in Germany on condition of anonymity.
