After controversies before Worlds, athletics body to announce qualification standards early

In view of the recent controversy regarding team selection ahead of the World Championships, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has decided to announce qualifying standards for next year’s Asian and Commonwealth Games well in advance and strictly adhere to them, reported PTI.

This was decided at a meeting of the AFI Committee for Planning, Coaching, Monitoring and Implementation held at NIS-Patiala last week.

At the two-day meeting held on Saturday and Sunday, the Planning Committee also reviewed the performance of every athlete who participated in the IAAF World Championships held in London last month.

AFI President Adille Sumariwalla said, “AFI is not satisfied with the performance of most of the athletes at the IAAF World Championships 2017 in London and it is being mentioned clearly to the chief coach Bahadur Singh. The performance of our athletes was poor.”

The AFI Planning Committee discussed the ways to strictly monitor working of its coaches at various national camps and setting up of monitoring teams.

“Coaches will be held accountable for the performances of the athletes. The targets for athletes will also be set in advance and those attaining qualifying standards set by AFI for Asian Games and CWG 2018 will be selected in the team,” Sumariwalla said. “Our focus is on Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Winning medals at Asian competitions and area championships is not enough.”

The Committee also identified events to focus on for Commonwealth Games, which will be held in Gold Coast in Australia from April next year, and for Asian Games which will be held in Jakarta (Indonesia) in August.

“We will give special attention to certain disciplines in which we have good pool of talented athletes in both men and women categories such as javelin, 400m, 4x400m relay and long jump for these Games. Very shortly we will announce qualifying standards for Asian Games and CWG 2018,” said the AFI president.

The Committee also decided to provide a list of athletes training outside national camps to the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA). A tentative calendar of the next season was also drawn up.