LAHORE: Only qualified coaches will be allowed to accompany their respective teams in the Pakistan contingent for this year’s Asian Games being held in Palembang-Jakarta, Indonesia from Aug 18 to Sept 2, it was decided at a meeting on Tuesday.

The Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) met with the presidents and secretaries of the national sports federations with POA chief retired Lt Gen Arif Hasan in the chair to decide only those coaches will be eligible who are properly qualified and have been associated in the training process.

“The federations will send the CVs of the coaches to ascertain their eligibility. This was done to eliminate the practice of favouritism and jeopardising the rights of those who work with the athletes throughout the training but at the end are dropped,” POA secretary Khalid Mahmood said.

Khalid further said overall 28 national sports federations would represent the country in the Asian Games and it had been decided that the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) would set up training camps for all the participants at the earliest. A representative of PSB Raja Zulifqar Akhtar also attended the meeting.

“The training camps shall be organised by PSB at the earliest so that the athletes get sufficient training and learn competitive skills to show the best results. The number of athletes proposed by the federations will be initially used in the team size calculator to be sent to the organising committee as a first step to facilitate the organisers to have an idea as how many athletes and officials will roughly be attending Asian Games,” Khalid said.

“Another important decision was made by the house that a sub-committee under chairman of the POA affiliation and constitution committee will review the participation of those games which are not affiliated with POA but invariably participate in international competitions showing good results and are desirous of participating at their own expense under the umbrella of POA,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2018