Foul or fair?: In India camp, suspicion of bias; Games officials under lens

Rohit Mahajan

Hangzhou, October 4

Just how did things come to such a pass that the organisers could not find the mark on the grass made by Neeraj Chopra’s javelin during the final here tonight? It’s mystifying, to say the least; the simplest explanation, however, could be true — that simple human error lies at the bottom of this controversy.

But some see a conspiracy behind this oversight, or a few other ‘errors’ that went against the Indian contingent.

Chopra, possibly the greatest Indian sports achiever, is a jolly kind of person who eschews controversy and never criticises officials — but tonight, he did say that ‘gadbad to hai’, something is wrong.

“Our team should look into why so many things have gone wrong,” Chopra said. “I haven’t seen this in big competitions because after a disruption to the first throw, I could have become mentally upset,” Chopra said. “We’ve seen how Jyothi Yarraji had to fight. Some athletes can be mentally strong and fight it, but it can affect others.”

Chopra continued: “It happened with Jyothi, me, and Jena. Gadbad toh hai. But we have got the results and shown them we’ve worked and won medals.”

Jyothi had been disqualified in the 400m hurdles final for an allegedly false start, but she protested strongly and was allowed to run, while a Chinese runner was disqualified for being the actual false-starter.

Kishore Jena’s second throw tonight was declared a foul; Jena and Chopra insist it was fair, and it was deemed OK after protests. “In the second throw, they called it a foul, saying I had touched the line,” Jena said. “But I had not. I don’t think they checked properly. I have never seen anything like this anywhere, not even at a domestic level event!”

Athletics Federation of India (AFI) senior vice-president Anju Bobby threw her weight behind the athletes, and added Anju Rani’s case to the list of injustices. “Annu’s first throw yesterday wasn’t measured either, they measured it after five minutes of arguing,” said Anju. “I felt Murali Sreeshankar jumped much better than 8.19m, and on one of his jumps they raised the red flag, but I think it was not a foul. I don’t know what’s wrong with their officiating.”

“They are doing this to Indian athletes, and I think this is all calculated,” she added. “Mistakes can happen once or twice but not continuously. We are officially lodging a complaint against the officials tonight. This is the Asian Games, it’s big. They are targeting Indians!”

Klaus Bartonietz, Chopra’s coach, provided another perspective on the ‘bias’ when he said he has seen worse. “In Portugal, they were once measuring distances five metres short!” he said.

Adille Sumariwalla, AFI president, refused to comment beyond saying that ‘appropriate’ steps would be taken through the proper channels to take up these complaints.