AFTER spending millions of rupees on the training and coaching of athletes, in 15 different disciplines, as well as sending a number of them abroad for training, the thrice postponed South Asian Federation (SAF) Games will hopefully now be held next month. But despite all the preparations, there is little hope that Pakistan will be able to break India’s continuing domination of the games.
Considered a scaled down version of Asian Games, this will be the second time that Islamabad will be hosting the event. The SAF Games were instituted in 1984. South Asia’s seven friendly neighbours — Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives — have since competed in this regional sporting extravaganza. And since 1984, India has demonstrated its total domination in all disciplines of the games, athletics in particular.
Despite the massive financial funding, incentives and support by Islamabad to the national federations for the SAF Games, Pakistan has so far been unable to surpass India on the medals table. We have consistently stood second or third in the overall medals table. We have even come fourth, Pakistan’s greatest humiliation during the 1999 Kathmandu SAF Games.
Seed money worth Rs150 million was given by the government to the SAF Games Organizing Committee for the holding of the event. Originally the Games were supposed to have been held in March 2002. But it got delayed thrice, mostly due to security concerns and India’s reluctance in sending its contingent to Pakistan. Apart from the US attack on Afghanistan, the cold relations between Pakistan and India too made sure that the Games were not held on time.
The organizing committee, headed by Maj-Gen Syed Arif Hussain, estimated an expense of Rs400 million for holding the seven-nation mega-event in a befitting manner. Renovation of the existing sports facilities, construction of a new shooting range and the laying of a modern tartan track were part of the deal. A national camp was established to provide the athletes best possible training and coaching under the supervision of foreign coaches. The training camps as well as foreign tours continued even after the SAF Games were postponed from March 2001 to October 2001.
The Games were eventually shifted to Sri Lanka which agreed to organize the Games in 2005. However, as it eventually turned out, the Sri Lankan government did not have the budgetary allocation for the event. Once again, Pakistan Olympic Association, Pakistan Sports Board and the SAF Organizing Committee got together to restart the campaign for holding the cancelled SAF Games in Islamabad. The POA initiated the move and the date was set for March, 2004. An amount of Rs400 million was sought that was subsequently met through sponsorship deals.
Fifteen disciplines are to be contested during the SAF Games. These are athletics (men and women), boxing, football, volleyball, wrestling, weightlifting, squash (men and women), swimming (men and women), table tennis (men and women), badminton (men and women), tae-kwan-do (men and women), rifle shooting (men and women), kabaddi, rowing and karate.
The national camps for boxing and rifle shooting are functioning in Karachi, football and karate are progress in Lahore while camps for other games are underway in Islamabad. Already the services of foreign coaches from China, South Korea, Iran, Bulgaria and Ukraine are being utilized.
Cuban coach Reinald Alvara has been attached with the Pakistan Boxing Federation for about four years. Before him, another Cuban coach had been attached with the Federation in the 80s. Thus our boxers have been trained by Cuban coaches for more than a decade now.
However, it seems that Islamabad’s sports bureaucracy has not learnt the precious lesson that the entire funding of every national team will not help it achieve the objective and goal of being on top of the SAF Games’ medal table. The biggest negative effect of funding an entire team is that those controlling the federation are busy strengthening their hold on their respective sports bodies. Promotion of the game becomes a lesser priority and federation heads are not worried about generating funds, even for holding the camps.
The Federations remained unaccountable to PSB or the organizing committee that are wasting public money in funding the teams. Let Islamabad help in providing foreign coaches and creating infrastructure thoughtout the country rather than wasting money and unnecessarily funding entire teams. It would have been much better had Islamabad allocated a certain amount to national federations for preparing the teams by generating funds for the future SAF Games. Let POA take the responsibly of funding its national teams and not Islamabad.
The organizational structure of our national sports bodies stood collapsed for over two decades and unless we have strong and solid grassroots base, Islamabad’s funding policy will eventually be proved a futile exercise, keeping in light our performance in the past eight SAF Games.
