National 6 (Spotlight Weekly)

Nepal’s Bleak Performance

After the completion of Athens Olympic, Nepal could only add another round of participation

By A CORRESPONDENT

As usual, Nepalese athletes returned empty handed only maintaining the record of participation at the Athens Olympics. Thanks to the last minute intervention of the Ministry of Sports and Education, Nepalese officials and athletes were able to travel to Athens amid disputes within the Nepal Olympics Committee (NOC).

Due to the dispute between the NOC and the National Sports Council (NSC), Nepalese athletes had been facing uncertainty regarding their participation in the international tournament.

The dispute between NOC and NSC is more than a year old. In an election of the NOC held a year ago, member secretary of the NSC Kishore Bahadur Singh, a close relative of Crown Princess Himani, had boycotted at the last minute against the present NOC president Rukma Sumsher Rana.

With the backing of member secretary Singh, the NOC led by Rana was de-registered. Then the issue reached to the apex court. Based on its own probe commission report, International Olympics Committee (IOC) backed Rana-led NOC.

Because of disputes among sports officials, Nepal’s participation at South Asian Federation Games was also shrouded in an uncertainty early this year. After the intervention of Ministry of Sports and Education, Rana and Singh agreed to bury their differences till the end of the Olympic games. The dispute has re-surfaced.

In Athens, the defeat of Sangina Baidya by Chinese Taipei player in Taekwondo shattered the nation’s hope to win maiden Olympic medal. Psychologically unprepared Baidya lost in her first round match to the Taiwanese player who went on to win the gold medal in Finn Flyweight (under 49 kg) category of the match.

More than two dozen people traveled to Athens including 6 athletes - two each in Athletics and Swimming and one each in Taekwondo and Shooting.

The Tokyo Olympics of 1964 was the first Olympics when two Nepalese players had taken part in the games. After 1972’s Munich Olympic, Nepal has regularly taken part in all the Olympics.

Inadequate Preparation

Had Sangina Baidya been given the training a year before the tournament, she would have shown better results. In athletics, shooting and swimming, too, Nepalese athletes did not get adequate training.

In the last few decades, the countries around the world have already made tremendous improvement through intensive training. “Qualifying in the last round is itself a big achievement for the country like Nepal,” said a senior coach at the National Sports Council. “Other countries are investing huge amount of money to prepare the players for final round but we gave just a month long training.”

Because of the disputes, this year even coaches were not taken to the tournament. One cannot expect a better result from a player who did not have any coach to consult.

Only achievements of Nepal are that Nepalese athletes took part in the opening and closing parade at Athens. When compared to the South Asian countries, however, Nepal’s performance was not too bad. Barring India, which won a silver medal, the performance of all other South Asian countries resembled to that of Nepal.