Junior athletes find shelter at Punjab gurudwara
NEWDELHI: The least the country’s crop of promising athletes can hope for at a national level sports meet is nutritious food and proper shelter. But participants at the two-day North Zone Junior Athletics Championships held on October 14 and 15, in Punjab, were in for a shock.
The local organisers of the meet at Tarn Taran, a small town which is around 20 km from the holy city of Amritsar, not only lodged them in a gurudwara, they also left them with no choice but to eat food from the community kitchen there. Athletes from six states, including UP and Delhi, complained that participants survived on a frugal diet of ‘dal and roti’ served at the gurudwara.
Sarthak Bhambri, a national level athlete from Delhi, said the participants had no other option as Tarn Taran hardly had any hotel or restaurant. “It was a big problem but no one was willing to address it. You either ate food at the gurudwara or starved as there was no other arrangement,” he told Hindustan Times.
The Delhi sprinter still went on to win two gold in the under-20 boys’ section. “Budding athletes from eight northern states had gone to showcase their talent, but were left to face this situation,” Bhambri added. Apart from food and lodging, the organisers were also casual about the schedule.
Confusion prevailed after the organisers, Punjab State Athletics Association, postponed the meet by a day, and reduced the three-day event to a two-day affair. The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) had originally scheduled the meet from October 13-15. “We got to know (about change of dates) only after we had started for Tarn Taran,” an official from Uttarakhand claimed.
The complaints were, however, brushed aside by KPS Brar, secretary-general of the Punjab athletics body. He said that the organisers were forced to put up athletes at a religious place due to fund crunch. “We don’t get any support from the government or federation to organise athletics.” AFI secretary general CK Valson, however, said, “It reflects poor administration at the state level.”