LAHORE: A coordination meeting of the national sports federations has urged the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) to organise the training camps at the earliest for the participation of the Pakistani contingent in the Asian Games being held in Palembang-Jakarta, Indonesia this year.
The meeting was presided over by Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) President Lt Gen (R) Syed Arif Hasan with residents/secretaries of the national sports federation in attendance along with PSB representative, Raja Zulfiqar Akhtar at the Olympic House here on Tuesday.
The meeting also discussed the number of participants both male and female in individual and team sports that have qualified or have the potential to show better performance in these games.
“The meeting decided that the training camps shall be organised by PSB at the earliest so that the athletes get sufficient training and learn competitive skills to show the best results”, said POA Secretary Muhammad Khalid Mahmood.
“The number of athletes proposed by the federations will be initially used in the team size calculator to be sent to the organizing committee as a first step to facilitate the organizers to have an idea as to how many athletes and officials will roughly be attending the games,” he added.
“Another important decision taken by the house that a sub-committee under chairman of the POA affiliation and constitution committee will review the participation of those games which are not affiliated with POA but invariably participate in international competitions showing good results and are desirous of participating at their own expense under the umbrella of POA”, said the POA official.
The criteria for coaches accompanying the teams were also discussed and decided that only those coaches will be eligible who are properly qualified and remained associated with the training process.
The federations will send their CVs to ascertain their eligibility. This was done to eliminate the practice of favouritism and depriving those who work with the athletes throughout the training but at the end are dropped.