Sports minister unhappy with preparations for CWG, Asian Games

India's preparations for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, have left Sports Minister Jitendra Singh less than impressed.

Singh was upset that only a handful of National Sports Federations (NSFs) had given a detailed training programme for the probable medal winners identified for the games, the sports ministry said in a statement here Tuesday.

The minister also directed that a chief coach along with his support staff be appointed for each discipline and their team should be entrusted with the responsibility for coaching of probables.

Singh also directed that a steering committee headed by Secretary (Sports) be set up and meet every week to review the progress of training sportsperson in each discipline by rotation. This system would hold till the conclusion of Commonwealth Games.

It was also decided that top training needs of sportsperson would be identified and will be funded from the National Sports Development Fund (NSDF). However, the main expenditure of training of sportsperson would be from Assistance to NSFs.

Director General, SAI was asked to provide estimates of expenditure so that suitable provisions could be made for training of sportsperson.

It was decided at the meeting that scientific data on all probables would be periodically collected and provided to the coaches so that they could tailor the coaching programme to the play parameters of each sportspersons.

The minister was concerned that India would stand to lose at least 30 medals in the next Commonwealth Games due to the exclusion of sports discipline like archery, greco-roman wrestling, team events in shooting and the like. These constituted more than 30 percent of the total medals won by India in the Commonwealth Games 2010 at New Delhi.

In comparison, the number of events dropped from the Asian Games 2014 is far less and consists mainly of non-field events like Chess, Billiards, Snooker etc.

The minister also wanted to know how the decision to exclude these events was taken some two years ago without India's views.

The minister directed Secretary (Sports) to take up the matter at the highest level with the Commonwealth Games Secretariat.