Commonwealth Games 2010 latest: Snake found in the games village
If last week’s embarrassments weren’t enough for the organisers of the Commonwealth games, news about an unwelcome visitor was surely going to make matters worse. The South African contingent housed at the village reported that
a snake had sneaked into the room of one of their athletes.
The report sent shock waves throughout the camp and infuriated the High Commissioner of the African country to no end who termed the preparations for the high profile event as abysmal.
Harris Mbulelo Majeke, the current South African High Commissioner to India, claimed that an athlete had complained that he found a snake in his room. He made the revelation after reviewing the accommodation facilities in place
for his country’s contingent at the Commonwealth Games village.
“Yesterday we found a snake. I don't know if it is an Indian snake, it was inside one of our rooms. That was really a threat to the lives of our athletes, of course it was still dirty, the basement was full of water and everything
was dirty inside, in fact there are a lot of repairs to be done.”
"Now the team, us, who went to inspect, we found that we cannot call our teams to go and stay there until those are fixed up. I think we have very serious concerns, which were really disappointing, but the teams are coming, going
to be part of the Commonwealth Games, no doubt about that but we are still rejecting the conditions over there. They are bad for us."
On the other hand, an Indian marksman complained about the lack of coordination amongst the Commonwealth Games authorities.
Highlighting this, Sunny Thomas, coach of the Indian shooting team said they were stranded for a prolonged time at the airport in New Delhi upon their arrival on Sunday.
According to him, due to a lack of proper communication, he and his team members were detained for over two hours whereas they were keen on reaching the range in order to practice and then move on to the games village.
A visibly upset Sunny Thomas mentioned that no sooner had the team arrived at the airport in the national capital, chaotic conditions were witnessed and even experienced.
"A bit of a lack of coordination is what happened, nothing more than that; if everything is going out of coordination it seems, of course we landed at the domestic airport at nine o' clock and were under the impression that from
there we are going to be taken to Dr. Karni Singh shooting range to deposit the weapons and all those because we cannot take the weapons directly to the village but on the tour we expected that the plan was different”.
He refused to comment if the Indian sportspersons were being sidelined as compared to the international teams and said that only the Indian team was present at the airport when the incident occurred.
With around 10,000 athletes and officials from 71 teams representing 54 Commonwealth member states arriving, New Delhi is also expecting a huge inflow of tourists during the event, to be held between 3 and 14 October.
The 12-day event will be India's biggest sporting spectacle since the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi.
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