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Unceremonious Tour

Nepal sends its Olympic squad comprising of five athletes and sixteen officials sparking controversy

By A CORRESPONDENT

The Nepalese Olympic contingent left for Sydney leaving behind a trail of controversies. Although nobody expects any medal from the Nepalese squad, it has been in the news for the last few weeks for all the wrong reasons.

First, it was the decision to take such a large entourage of officials. To accompany five athletes, sixteen officials have left for Sydney. What is more intriguing is the "officials" do not comprise of coaches and trainers, rather it includes kith and kin of sports officials.

Rana and Palikhe : Clash of interest

Apart from one athletics coach, the band of officials include the President of Nepal Olympic Committee (NOC) Rukma SJB Rana, General Secretary Dhruba Bahadur Pradhan, Minister of State for Sports and Education Dilendra Prasad Badu and some other officials of the NOC.

The list of sixteen "officials" also includes wives of Rana, Pradhan and Badu. Not in the list, however, are the coaches for swimming and shooting. "I feel quite disappointed to be going alone without my coach," said Chitra Bahadur Gurung in Kantipur daily. Gurung is taking part in the 50m freestyle event of swimming.

Rana justifies the large entourage of officials saying it would provide "exposure". But members of the Nepalese sports fraternity are less than amused. "If indeed he wanted to give exposure, he should have taken coaches and athletes instead of officials," said a sports analyst.

The Sydney contingent was further embroiled in controversy after its Chef de Mission Binod Shankar Palikhe, who is the member-secretary of National Sports Council (NSC), complained that he was not given the authority to handle the contingent.

According to Palikhe, it is the international practice to give the overall authority and responsibility of managing the Olympic squad to its Chef de Mission.

"But it is absolutely wrong to bypass Chef de Mission and give the responsibility to another member," he said complaining the high-handedness of Rana. According to him, NOC President Rana gave the authority to use contingency expenses to another member Anil Sharma.

The Nepalese contingent earned another black mark after the participating athletes threatened to refuse to accept the daily allowances.

The athletes charged that while the officials were pocketing a daily allowance of 100 dollars each, they were being given a petty allowance of 8 US dollars. Later on the NOC increased the allowance to 17.5 US dollars. The Olympic squad will be spending about Rs 4 million to travel to Sydney.

"The staffs of NSC have not received salaries for the last three months but the hefty budget has been given to the unnecessarily large Olympic entourage," said Ganesh Thapa, President of All Nepal Football Association (ANFA), questioning the ethics of sports officials including the minister.

The scene at the departure lounge of Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA) on September 11, when the Nepalese squad left for Sydney, spoke volumes about the mood in which they were departing. Whereas the five athletes and Chef de Mission Palikhe were formally seen off by officials of NSC, most other members of the squad hurried past the lounge for fear of having to bear the criticism from the journalists standing nearby.

The present controversies and the manner in which the Nepal Olympic Committee handled it does not augur well for the development of sports in the country.