Asian Games: Sports Ministry to Review Performance of Elite Athletes Under TOPS

The Sports Ministry will thoroughly review the Asian Games performance with respective federations, especially looking at how 89 experienced athletes in the contingent of around 500 failed to win a single medal in Aichi-Nagoya.

Thirty-four of these experienced athletes, who have taken part in various multi-disciplinary sports events before, are under the Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS) and a sum of ₹27.16 crore has been spent on them.

India had reasonably hoped to see better performance from its top sportsmen/coaches and from those under the TOPS program by the Sports Ministry's exposure visits, coaching and competition.

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A review should be conducted on such abysmal performance of our experienced athletes who have been granted all the facilities in the run-up to the Games, top official in the Sports Ministry said.

The official further said there will be a review of the performance, as well as the federations.

After a disappointing start Indian athletes bounced back in the last two days to win 11 gold medals and put the country in 4th place in the medal tally. While India finished with 85 medals, the number of medals won by the host country was 50. In the previous edition in Huangzho India had crossed the 100-medal-mark finishing at a remarkable 106.

The Ministry has invited federation officials for a meeting this week to discuss the performance.

There were nine sports, including badminton and shooting, in which the showing was not very good. Track and Field: Some athletes were injured and were removed from the competition at the last minute and besides that there were no gold medals.

It could also see a restructuring of TOPS programme with emerging talents getting priority. The official said they would see if they needed to review the policy.

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In seven disciplines, India picked up the gold in Huangzhou, while it didn't hold its own in Aichi-Nagoya.

The Ministry also would like to investigate how many athletes reported an injury upon arriving in Japan. The number of such athletes, mostly track and field, who pulled out at the last minute, was nine. It comprised of Jyothi Yarraji and Praveen Chithravel.

But the good story is that there were a lot of them, too, namely 106 medal-winning debutants, even in team events.

The archery, boxing and wrestling performances were excellent and the Sports Ministry has commented on this.

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