Commonwealth Games 2010: athletics in crisis at the Delhi Games
The athletics competitions of the Commonwealth Games opened on Wednesday, the third day of the Delhi Games. The judges and other technical staff of the athletics competitions have threatened the Indian Commonwealth Games Organizing
Committee to go on a strike if progress is not made in their transportation facilities. The judges complained that they were made to wait at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Wednesday and Thursday for hours. They also added that they could not thus go to bed
before 2 am, which was just six hours before their reporting time the next morning.
Among the most furious athletic officials were the British technical director of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Keith Davies and Bill Bailey, the Australian IAAF Council member and technical delegate to
the Commonwealth Games New Delhi. The angry remarks and woes of the aforementioned officials and their counterparts were conveyed to the chairman of the troubled and crisis hit organizing committee, Suresh Kalmadi. Kalmadi, as always, assured them that he
will look into the matter and assured them of immediate response to their complaints.
In the series’ of crisis involved with the athletics department of the Commonwealth Games, the strike threat by the technicians and officials is the latest one. The controversies started when it was found out that the running track
was damaged during the ‘apparently’ successful opening ceremony and required emergency repair. The repair work continued throughout the day on Wednesday - even a few hours before the competitions were scheduled to start. This led to a myriad of complaints
and doubts about the quality of the rubber track which was under repair.
The crowd at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium which can a host a maximum of 60,000 spectators was just based on barely 10,000 people. When these statistics are compared to the houseful venues of the Melbourne and Manchester Games in
2006 and 2002 respectively, the organizers are left in utter disappointment.
Amidst the chaos at the athletics venues, the electronic scoreboard at the rugby venue came crashing down. The incompetent organizing committee made headlines again. But luckily for them, the venue was empty at that time and there
were no spectators close to the scoreboard.
The members of the teams have again started to voice fears over the security conditions at the Games’ venues, especially after the chef de Mission of the Pakistani contingent has announced the theft of 24,800 Indian rupees from
his room at the Village.
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