Diminishing glory at Asiad

By now it is quite evident that Nepal’s overall performance at the ongoing 16th Asian Games, underway at Guangzhou, China, would not be something that we will remember fondly in the days to come. So far the only certainty is that boxer Deepak Maharjan, who has already booked himself a place in the semi-finals of the men’s 81-kg weight category, will at least fetch us a bronze medal if not a silver or a gold. It is certainly not that the country had hoped miracles from all our athletes who flew to China. However, Nepali fans had definitely hoped that martial arts disciplines, particularly taekwondo, would fetch us some medals.



If history is anything to go by, there was a sound basis for fans here in the country to pin their medal hopes on taekwondo. Nepal has so far participated in 15 editions of the Asiad and won altogether 20 bronzes and a silver of which 13 bronzes and the lone silver have come from taekwondo. So what went wrong this time around? Sports watchers say that that the taekwondo contingent is returning home empty-handed for primarily two reasons: The scuffle between the Nepal Sports Council (NSC) and the Nepal Olympic Committee (NOC) just before flying off to China, which affected the preparation of our athletes, and their lack of familiarity with electric socks and electric chest guards that the players had to compulsorily use from this edition of the Games.



The reason for the fight between NSC and NOC is quite public and something that has already been discussed in this space a couple of times earlier. To sum it up, it is nothing but a personality clash between the heads of two sporting bodies for which our athletes are unnecessarily suffering. The other reason for the poor performance in taekwondo is quite preposterous, to say the least. Sending our athletes to take on world-class fighters without even giving them a chance to train with the new equipments is akin to throwing them in the ring with both their hands tied. Could we have expected any better result from them under such circumstances?



The sports sector of our country is truly in a dire need for reforms. The first and the foremost step that needs to be taken is to depoliticize the sector. The other reform measures will simply be ineffective if dirty political games to occupy top and lucrative posts go on unabated. The budget for the ongoing fiscal year has identified sports as one of the top priority sectors of the country. This is a good start. Now let us start working immediately to ensure that when our athletes go to participate in the next Asiad, we can rest assured of a flurry of medals at least in areas where we are already relatively strong such as taekwondo.

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