Prospects bleak for SA Games

Athletics officials do not sound too confident regarding Bangladesh's chances of winning gold medals in next year's South Asian (SA) Games as they cited lack of funds and the consequent inability to provide long-term training as the main roadblocks towards Bangladesh lagging behind compared to their South Asian neighbours.

Bangladesh produced some of the fastest men and won gold medals in other sprint events during the '80s and '90s -- the initial years of the regional sports meet -- but since then the country has been able to produce only a handful of medals in track and field as India, Sri Lanka and even Maldives have surpassed them in athletics.

Hence, as this year's summer athletics meet starts tomorrow at the Bangabandhu National Stadium (BNS) and with the SA Games knocking on the door, organisers and athletics officials could only hope that things would change for the best in the coming days.

"I can say that you will see records in December [in the national athletics meet] and there might be one or two records in the summer games, but I cannot give any guarantee regarding that," Kitab Ali, advisor to Bangladesh Athletics Federation [BAF], said during the official press conference for the Dhaka City FC 14th Summer Athletics Championship at the BNS yesterday.

The veteran athletics coach earmarked a lack of funds and training opportunities for this hopeless situation. "We are way behind the others. It will be very difficult to produce good results in the SA Games if we do not start long-term preparations with a big budget," he said.

The biggest example of this hopeless situation, perhaps, is the fact that the event is being arranged within two days instead of three due to constraints in the budget, which is being provided by a budding football club.

"While we [BAF] get a fund [annually] of only 16 lakh taka, the budget for Sri Lankan athletics is 100 crore taka," Kitab added, pointing to the disparity in investment in athletics between the two South Asian nations.

However, the organisers were hoping that they could soon start training for the SA Games with 60 athletes provided they get the plan approved by the government. They were also hoping that they would get proper assistance from services teams in preparing the athletes.

Meanwhile, the organisers were expecting close to 500 athletes from district, divisional, university, training institutes and services teams to participate in 36 events -- 22 for men and 14 for women -- in the summer meet.

They also assured there would be no issues regarding the electronic timing and the photo-finish technologies that are in place at the BNS.

The press conference was attended, among others, by BAF president ASM Ali Kabir, general secretary Adv. Abdur Rakib, and Dhaka City FC's general secretary Shamsuzzoha Khan.