Rio debacle sends govt into reflective mode

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 24

Following India’s below-par performance at the Rio Olympics, the government and the Sports Ministry have gone into an introspective mode to find out the reasons behind the debacle.

Taking the first step in this direction, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has called a high-level meeting of major stakeholders in Indian sports —the Sports Ministry, the Sports Authority of India (SAI), the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and the National Sports Federations (NSFs) — to suggest a roadmap to maximise the country’s medal chances at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

It has been learnt that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not happy with India’s poor medal count in Rio. While the government machinery expected a double-digit haul, the 118-member Indian contingent returned with just two medals. The PMO has asked the stakeholders to submit a detailed report on Rio debacle and to fix the accountability among sports administrators.

SAI tells NSFs to put expense details online

SAI has asked the NSFs to put out the details of their expenses incurred under the Annual Calendar for Competition and Training (ACTC) online.  SAI wants NSFs to upload details of the amount spent on each athlete for his training and competition, apart from the status of national camps and the national championships organised. This will help SAI to monitor the budgetary allocation to each NSF in an efficient way. The deadline to make the financial details online is September 30, 2016.

Budget cuts for non-performing NSFs

In one of the fall-outs of India’s poor campaign, SAI would soon convene an urgent meeting of its project officers and NSFs to draw a distinction between the performing and non-performing sports federations. It has been learnt that some of the federations could face a major cut in their annual budgetary allocation after their athletes failed to perform up to the desired level at Rio. There were high expectations from tennis, archery, hockey and shooting, but their athletes drew a blank in Rio, prompting SAI to revisit the budgetary allocation of these federations.

Health of Rio athletes to be monitored 

The Union Health Ministry has decided to monitor the health of all 118 athletes who competed in Rio for the next two months as part of the precautionary measures to rule out any chances of these athletes having contracted Zika virus. The details of all athletes, coaches and support staff, along with their mobile numbers and residential addresses, have been sought by the Health Ministry to keep a constant check on their health.

Shooting body to set up Rio review panel

The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) has proposed to set up a special committee, to be headed by Abhinav Bindra, to carry out a comprehensive review of the shooters’ below-par performance at the Rio Games.  “NRAI will shortly announce the formation of an independent committee to analyse the performance of the Indian shooting team at Rio and fix accountability for the debacle,” said a top official of the federation. The panel will also be asked to suggest measures to avoid such a failure in the future.