BEIJING; At the send-off press conference for the Indian Olympic contingent, IOA president Suresh Kalmadi announced that there would be 42 officials going. He brushed aside repeated queries from the press as to whether there would be other sports administrators going along under the guise of varied nomenclature of officialdom.
Kalmadi was quite categorical that he was tired of the constant criticism that too many officials going along attract and that this time the issue had been addressed.
As it turns out, there has been no curtailing the junkets doled out to all those who control votes in the IOA. Precise numbers are never forthcoming from the body but officials told DNA that there are close to a hundred official Common Wealth Games 2010 observers along for the Beijing ride. That is of course apart from the fact that even that 42 number has been beefed up ever since the contingent got to the Games.
For starters the tennis support staff was supposed to have been pruned down to four. That has now gone up to eight with four coaches and trainer joining. These are, of course, genuine cases of essential support staff that the players themselves requested for but just as to how many others have been ‘accommodated’ in the Olympic village is difficult to ascertain. The more interesting bit is the delegation staying at the Guo Yi Hotel. It is packed with so-called observers with enough IOA big-wig kith and kin floating about under the guise of being here to help India host a good show in 2010.
The funny bit is that a great deal of them do not have accreditation and till now the Chinese have not acceded to repeated requests from the IOA. Some of them are availing of the concessionary tickets that the body gets but then they are reduced to being mere spectators with limited access and as such the observing that they will do will be extremely restricted given the Chinese mania for security.
