Swimming trials rules violated by officials to favour kith and kin
Parents to take up cudgels with DYSA, meet Prabudessai today
Francis Ribeiro
PANJIM: One does not have to be the best in sports to be at the nationals. In india and in Goa especially there are ways to find a way in to a place one should actually not be. So is the case with swimming now.
The swimming nationals are to take place in July and the selection trials have ended. The benchmark for this years selections are the sixth place timings of last years nationals. Eight swimmers crossed this mark and found themselves a place in the Goa team.
All good so far. However, things started showing a different picture when the selectors broke the benchmark rule to select the relay team for Goa. No benchmarks were set for this. That was not fine. However, things got even murkier when after the relay team was selected the officials involved bent the rules even further. All those selected in the relay were allowed to take part in the individual events for the nationals.
So from the 8 legally selected the number rose to 28. Twenty boys found a berth for the nationals- where one gets 25 marks for representing the State- without actually passing the benchmark or qualifying judiciously.
Strangely, one of those boys had his father who was not only a judge and the referee for the selections but is also the coach of the Sports Authority of Goa (SAG) Mr. R.K Singh. The boy who got himself selected without passing the benchmark is Anurag Singh.
Anurag’s selection and the selection of the other 19 boys leaves many questions to be answered. One of the many of them is: Can the father of a ward wanting to participate be the judge and the referee? Is this not the case of conflict of interest? Or does the rule of conflict of interest apply to other things?
Until last year all those who stood first and second were selected to represent the state. For some strange reason, the same system was not followed this time. Worse still, none were informed that there was going to be a change in system.
“ Participants were aware that there were going to be qualifying times. We followed the rules set by the swimming federation. Previously, the gold and silver medallists were selected because the standard in Goa was low. It has improved now,” stated Sudesh Narvekar, secretary of the Goa Swimming Association (GSA).
“There was a lad called Taran Mukherjee. He missed by a second or so. But that is the problem. We cannot help in such matters. We know it is not right to have kept Singh as judge and referee. But that was because there were no more officials ,” stated Sudesh.
“We have done the selections as per the directives of the swimming federation. There was no bias towards anyone and there is no discrimination. Whatever is done has been done transparently. There are some first timers parents who sometimes do not understand,” stated Sudesh.
Whatever the excuses, the fact is that anomalies were allowed to slip in. Most probably many more deserving missed the bus to the nationals. It was a sad day for them.
