The commonwealth games that is.
It was reported even a year back that things were behind schedule. No media person, no organizing member is able to defend the progress (only give assurances that it will be pulled togehter somehow...). Instead of taking the responsibility Kalmadi (who has been with the Indian Olympic committee for thirteen years or more, comes out in attack against another CWG member who has been there for two).
I think the media should ask him what has been done for the Indian Olympics during his tenure and why are the facilities so much behind schedule? Shouldn't we have taken remedial measures a while back? I also think tenures of IOC presidents etc. must be curtailed to a single term, to get new ideas in, to give new energy to sports in the country.
I actually don't think we should even be hosting these games, until our sporting infrastructure is improved across the country and until our infrastructure is ready.
I had also seen an article on F1 in Delhi. Isn't there some conflict of interest here? Isn't there a oversight committee? Given that F1 is not an Olympic sport, why is the IOA even involved?
Perhaps India will pull through and host the games successfully, but I am not sure I will feel any great pride.
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About Me
- RS
- A female sports fan based in Chennai. Follow most sports (except boxing, wrestling and similar ones). Tried my hand at all the sports I watch, and am not very good at any of them :-) So the opinions/thoughts are strictly and unashamedly as a viewer/fan and not an expert. I also blog at ipl08
7 comments:
you have no business to question our lax attitude and responsibilities... and in interest of indian sports (ream me) i ask you to leave with immediate effect...
- signed
Kalmadi
They missed the stadium completion date. Great... Funnily almost the whole of India except that organizing committee knew this will happen four years back.
To me all of this is a total waste of money and a bad dent to our image. This seems to be getting done for the sole reason of politicians and their organizers to earn pot loads of money through shady kick backs and vested interest contracts.
At what price... Pathetic.
@sp : lol -- I have no idea what he intended with this press statement
@scorpi: agreed -- pathetic. I think the organizing committee also knew of it, but thought the "please adjust" attitude would be acceptable.
Let's go back to 1980-81, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, our PM of that time, freshly bereaved by the death of her favorite and second child Sanjay, hauled in a reluctant Rajiv Gandhi from the cockpit of an Indian Airlines Airbus and handed him the 1982 Asiad project - both as a testing ground for his organisational skills and also for wetting his feet in the art of managing people, funds and projects on a large scale.
Rajiv Gandhi, who also became PM and was assasinated like his mother, gathered a team guided by lieutnants like Arun Singh, satish Sharma and cousin Arun Nehru.
In about nine months flat, the flyovers, stadia and games village of Delhi were up and running. And without a whiff of scandal or calumny.
It was a grand event, that Asiad 82, Indira G was resplendent at the opening ceremony, you could see she was pleased with RG's work ethic and results, and we had vacation in college for the games...so we spent the entire duration of it in different stadia and ticket centres...including the nights waiting in ques for the counters to open by the morning light.
Fast forward to today - technology has grown in leaps and bounds, funds are more plentiful, existing structures from that Asiad 82 are being upgraded rather than being built from scratch in most cases....the main construction from scratch is the Metro system...they may yet do it, but there is too much dust floating around today in comparison to the quiet efficiency of those days when things came up almost before one realized they were there.
By the way, back in those games of 82, one another person made a distinctive name for herself with stellar, hands-on management - Kiran Bedi, a young IPS officer, the first lady IPS officer of India in fact, created her reputation as the DCP Traffic then....Delhi was never a better place to drive and ride.
By the way, today is the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi - she was slain by her bodyguards 25 years ago.
Sorry for posting so often, but memories keep coming back when talk started on those Asiad games....we turned scalpers that time...college students were issued subsidized tickets (3 per head per event) and the gang of us qued up every day (we had to do it every day...no advance booking allowed except for the entire day on that day...the complete pass)...we'd brave the lathis of policemen trying to keep the lines straight, the crush and body odours of people waiting along with us through the night, hold our bladders and bowles, claim our tickets when our chance came and rush immediately to the back of the que to hawk 2 out of the three tickets of our quota per event per day at roughly 50-75 times the original price of Rs.5.
The money we made that month, ensured a princely existence for the next one year in our college hostel and cafetria without having to pinch our parents.
@soulberry
Enjoyed reading about your memories.
I don't remember the Asian Games very much except for Appu. However the CWG have been poorly managed and no is pulling up the kalmadi and others when things started going off track.
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