LAHORE: The Pakistan Sports Board is continuing with its policy of sending athletes with medal-winning chances to international events.

The PSB on Thursday reduced the Pakistan contingent from 122 to 76 for next month’s Islamic Solidarity Games in Turkey in a similar move to one earlier this month when the contingent for the Commonwealth Games was cut to 74 from 104.

However, the Pakistan Olympic Association vowed that it try to accommodate and cover the costs of all the athletes to participate in the events — an issue which will come under discussion during its executive body meeting here on Saturday.

The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in Birmingham, England from July 28 to Aug 8 and will be immediately followed by the Islamic Solidarity Games in Konya, Turkey from Aug 9 to 18.

“The cases of athletes whose accreditations had been made for both the Games will be under consideration during the executive body meeting on Saturday,” POA secretary Khalid Mahmood told Dawn on Thursday.

“We will try to accommodate all the athletes as it doesn’t look nice if they don’t participate even after their accreditations have been made. The responsibility of the travelling officials will fall on the shoulders of the respective national sports federations.”

PSB director general retired Col Asif Zaman reiterated the government’s policy to only fund those athletes who have chances to win medals.“Pakistan has chances to win medals in volleyball, wrestling and weightlifting so they are intact,” Asif told Dawn on Thursday.

Hockey isn’t part of the Islamic Games while PSB will fund participants in athletics, judo, karate, shooting, swimming and taekwondo at the event. The PSB has approved a contingent of 53 athletes, 13 coaches and team officials, seven contingent officials and three dignitaries.

Swimmers have been included despite Pakistan’s track record in the sport being rather unimpressive.

The PSB has come under criticism for omitting the five-member badminton squad for the Commonwealth Games on the pretext of performance and Asif defended that move, saying “they had no chance for medals”.

Khalid, however, countered saying that players “could learn a lot through participation in international events and that experience would be useful for the future”.

The PSB has held a 15-day training camp for the athletes but Asif said that training camps for medal hopes had been underway for the last year.

“But longer training camps will be held for the South Asian Games and the Asian Games which are expected to be held next year,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2022