— Lt Gen (r) Syed Arif Hasan, president, POA

What do you think went wrong at the London Olympics, for which we had four years to prepare? What was the POA’s contribution towards it?

World class athletes are not produced overnight. It takes years of preparation, and preparation for the Olympics, therefore, is not a question of four or eight years. This is a continuous effort with a sporting system in place which gives you the base on which this effort is built. Unfortunately, this base has never been built. We keep depending on individuals who may happen to come up on their own. There is no physical education and sports in schools and colleges. There is no sport structure at the grass root level i.e., tehsils, districts etc. All these are the responsibilities of the government.

The PSB establishes a camp just a few weeks / months before the event. Before that not a single paisa is spent on the development of any athlete — hockey is an exception which reportedly received approximately 500-700 million from the PSB. Even when the camp is established the athletes are not given the resources that they require.

It has been said that smaller countries have performed better than us. True, but most of these smaller countries have a better education system where sports are encouraged and played at the grassroot level. They have a better sport infrastructure and they focused their limited resources on a single sport and in limited events in which they believed they had natural talent available. We had offered to the PSB an academy on which they would not have had to spend a penny and would be sponsored. They did not even bother to reply.

Also, we have no sports policy worth the name. There is no vision at the government level. We wanted to send our wrestlers for the qualifying round for the 2012 Olympics but the PSB refused to give permission. We do not know the ‘how's’ but we want to win medals, but the way we are going I am afraid that is not going to happen.

The only expectation was from hockey for which the PSB gave direct funding. Imagine if only a fraction of this money, for example, say Rs200 million was also spent on training of athletes in martial arts or wrestling, which have appeared as our strengths in recent years, what could have happened. If the government cannot spend a few billion rupees in installing the modern synthetic surfaces and providing modern training methodologies to our young hockey players when they start playing hockey, it might be better to use some funds for sports where we can actually train athletes with potential at an international level.

What are the duties and responsibilities of the POA in preparing a team for the Olympics?

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) operate under the Olympic Charter and are the representative of the IOC in their respective countries and in Pakistan it is the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA). As far as the role and responsibilities are concerned no NOC is directly responsible for the elite athlete training. In Pakistan this responsibility has been given to the PSB by the government.

As per the IOC mandate, the mission of the NOCs is to develop, promote and protect the Olympic movement in their respective countries, in accordance with the Olympic Charter. This is what is also stated in the POA's constitution. In addition the POA is required to ensure all national sports federations adhere to the Olympic Charter so to as to allow their athletes to participate in international events held under the auspices of the IOC, OCA and other international sports federations. Also, as part of its responsibilities the POA also organises the technical and organisational issues vis-a-vis participation of Pakistani athletes and teams in such competitions.

The POA, therefore, has no role in the preparation of any team for participation in any international event. This is the responsibility of the national federation with the funding and other resources raised by such federation or provided by the PSB if it is so desired by the government. It is the PSB which has to ensure that all necessary facilities including funding, infrastructure, coaching, medical sciences support, nutritional support etc., are provided to the athletes to enable them to come up to the acceptable international standard.

Apart from hockey, the rest of the contingent was based on wild card entry. How do you think the wild card has helped Pakistan?

The IOC rule is that all countries of the world must be represented at the Olympics. The minimum figure for this is laid down as six, with a team counting as one. Since only hockey had qualified, five additional entries were given to Pakistan. I am sure the athletes must have benefitted from the experience. Anum Bandey broke her own national record. Liaquat may just have qualified for the semi-finals or improved his timings had his coach been there.

Much has been also made in the press of tennis not being given a wild card entry. Aisam is a world ranking doubles player hence based on the rules of wild card he could qualify for the doubles tournament but we had no other sufficiently ranked partner for him to qualify for the wild card in tennis. The reason was that Aqeel could not gain the ranking as he had insufficient international exposure. This again shows how we have produced a single amazing tennis player but failed to train anyone else to that level.

How do you justify the inclusion of a large number of officials in the contingent that accompanied the participants to London?

There seems to be some misperception, deliberate or otherwise. The organising committee gives a detailed breakdown of the officials who could/should accompany the contingent. These numbers are worked out according to the size of the contingent: Chef de Mission, secretary of the contingent (the PSB Official) — he is supposed to take over the accommodation, etc and acts as the liaison between the organisers and the contingent —, security liaison officer (essential requirement given by the organisers), a doctor who’s mandatory and an IT personal who runs the contingent office and assists the secretary contingent for effective coordination between athletes, officials, NOC and the organising committee.

For hockey there were six officials and in athletics there was one female coach. In fact, there should have been a coach for the male athlete as well. The rest of the athletes had their managers as per the authorisation of the organising committee.

An official is essentially required as he has to perform a number of duties for and on behalf of the athletes and is an important member. All these officials are detailed by the concerned federation as per the vacancies given by the organisers which cannot be increased and in most cases not decreased. This also gives an international exposure to the officials with free boarding and lodging by the organising committee. —Atifuddin Khan