Pro golfers in SA Games?

Bangladesh's professional golfers will likely represent the country in the upcoming South Asian (SA) Games in Nepal as the South Asian Olympic Committee made the preliminary decision to allow them to participate after reinstating the golf event, which was first introduced to the regional multi-sports tournament in the 2010 edition in Dhaka.

In 2010, hosts Bangladesh won both the gold medals available for golf but ace golfer Siddikur Rahman did not participate as it was an amateur event where Dulal Hossain Zakiruzzaman, Sakhawat Hossain Sohel and Jamal Hossain Mollah enjoyed success. This time however, professional golfers are eligible to take part and so Siddikur will definitely try to help Bangladesh defend the gold medal in the individual event.

“The South Asian Olympic Committee meeting has initially decided to make the professional golfers eligible to take part in the upcoming SA Games. So we are hopeful with our professional golfers such as Siddikur, Jamal and Sohel,” said Bangladesh Olympic Association (BOA) director general Fakharuddin Haider, adding that the Indian professional golfers are unlikely to participate as there is no prize money.

However, Haider also said that the final decision on whether to include professional golfers will be taken at the next organising committee meeting.

It may be mentioned here that professional golfers were eligible to take part in the last edition of Olympic Games in Brazil.

Though golf has been restored to the SA Games, hockey has been dropped due to the unavailability of any hockey infrastructure in the host country. Aside from the 2006 edition in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh won the bronze medal in each and every hockey event in the Games' history.

With the 13th edition of the regional Games set to take place in Nepal between March 9 to 18, the BOA wants to begin training athletes soon after receiving the required funds from the government. The BOA higher-ups also met with officials from the Youth and Sports Ministry on Thursday to request the funds in order to begin training as soon as possible.

“We told them that Bangladesh won 18 gold medals in Dhaka after nearly two years training and then won only four gold medals in last SA Games on the back of only four months training. So the successes in next SA Games in Nepal will depend on how fast we can start training with only seven months in hand,” BOA DG Haider said. “We have placed a training budget of Tk 24 crore and another Tk 15 crore for participation to the ministry. The ministry told us that they have no funds at the moment but are trying to initially allocate Tk 10 crore after discussing the matter with the sports minister.”

The BOA spent Tk 8 crore to train the squad ahead of the 12th SA Games in Guwahati and Shillong, India but this time the BOA has requested three times that amount.

“We want to provide a good environment to the athletes by accommodating them at hotel instead of in poor conditions at the dormitories. So, we have to spend extra money for the accommodation with approximately Tk 1550 [food-650, accommodation-600, laundry-300] to be spent behind a single athlete per day,” explained Haider.