What is it with sports officials that they seem to have a propensity to snub their former sports stars. First we have former Olympians from Malaysia complaining about being snubbed during the Olympic torch relay in Kuala Lumpur.
Now we have, Indian Olympians also feeling slighted. From Sportstar:
[T]he sole criterion concerning the selection of a sports personality says, the person should “be distinguished for contributions to the Olympic Movement or for extraordinary performance at past Olympic Games.”Three such personalities were available in Delhi, but they were not called. Sriram Singh, one of the finest athletes India has produced, a finalist in the 800 metres in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was hoping to get a call, but it never came. Sriram still holds the National record of 1:45.77 that he set in the final in Montreal.
At the same Games, Hari Chand set another National record, that of 28:48.72 in the 10,000 metres that has remained intact. He too was ignored. Both Sriram and Hari Chand are also double gold medal winners in the Asian Games. Then there was R. S. Bhola, the hockey veteran of the 1956 Melbourne Games where India won the gold and Rome Olympics where India took the silver.
Another athlete who was available in Delhi and who could easily have been accommodated was Praveen Kumar. The small screen’s Bheem is a double gold medallist in discus in the Asian Games and a silver winner in hammer in the Commonwealth Games.
There were others too who could have been included, Prakash Padukone, Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan, V. Baskaran, Pargat Singh, Ashok Kumar, Mohammed Shahid, P. K. Banerjee, Chuni Goswami, Michael Ferreira and Pankaj Advani to name just a few among those who were ignored.
Hah! What about that Indian Olympic Assocation (IOA)? How could you have botched this one? With that many ex-Olympians to choose from, seems like you didn’t make good choices at all. Not cool, IOA, not cool.
