File image of Indian cricket team.© AFP

File image of Manu Bhaker.© AFP

The Indian Olympic Association’s executive council meeting in New Delhi on Thursday is expected to be a heated affair with its members adding contentious items on the agenda, including the alleged “threatening letters” issued by president PT Usha to them. The meeting will take place in the backdrop of growing tensions between Usha and IOA treasurer Sahdev Yadav. On Tuesday, Yadav threatened legal action against Usha for “defaming” his image after she issued a show cause notice to him on the basis of a complaint challenging his eligibility to hold the post.

The 14 agenda points added by the executive council cover a discussion on “illegal and threatening letters issued by the President to the members of the Executive Committee from time to time”.

As per two more items concerning the president, the council will “discuss and deliberate upon the scope of powers of the president under the IOA Constitution and will decide on the need for reporting the conduct of the president to the IOA Ethics Commission”.

The official communication on the meeting was jointly issued by 12 council members, including senior vice president Ajay Patel, vice-president Rajalaxmi Singh Deo, vice-president and former Olympic medallist Gagan Narang, member and former wrester Yogeshwar Dutt among others.

The members who did not sign the document included boxer M C Mary Kom and table tennis player A Sharath Kamal, who are on the IOA athletes commission.

Issues related to the recent Paris Olympics will also be a substantial part of the meeting.

They include the sponsorship details of the Olympics, “additional expenditure” incurred in Paris covering the room upgrade expense of president at alleged cost to the IOA and “bring to knowledge the list of accreditation cards issued to various people at Paris Olympics including various Passes and Invites”.

Another discussion will pertain to the process followed for selecting the Sportsperson of Outstanding Merit (SOM) in November 2022 and their participation in the election of the IOA for elected posts.

The athletes commission had picked eight SOMs back then including Usha, Yogeshwar Dutt, MM Somaya (hockey), Rohit Rajpal (tennis), Akhil Kumar (boxing), Shuma Sirur (shooting), Aparna Popat (badminton) and Dola Banerjee (archery).

In western Paris, the swimming pool where national hero Leon Marchand won four gold medals at this summer’s Olympics in the French capital is being stripped down and prepared for a move. The pool was part of one the many temporary sports facilities used during the Games, built inside the Paris Defense Arena, a stadium to the west of the city which was deafening during each of Marchand’s medal-winning exploits. Around 25 kilometres (miles) of scaffolding are being pulled down by the pool, while the 50-metre water basin itself — made of hundreds of aluminium panels bolted together — will soon be dismantled and sent by truck to a new home in a northern suburb.

The Paris Games relied more than any previous Olympics on the use of temporary sports facilities in a deliberate bid to keep costs and carbon emissions low.

It was also a way of avoiding the sort of wasteful spending that has plagued previous Games which have seen shiny new venues fall empty and into disrepair once the Olympics carousel moves on.

“We didn’t put in place the gifting strategy recently. We’ve had it mind since the start of the project,” Marie Barsacq, head of impact and legacy at Paris 2024, stressed to reporters.

“We learned a lot from previous editions.”

Legacy

The 50-metre pool is destined for Sevran, a disadvantaged, high-immigration part of the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris which has around a quarter of the number of pool facilities per inhabitant as the national average.

Sevran plans to call it the “Leon Marchand pool”, with the Paris 2024 organising committee paying donating the pool, while the local council will pick up the tab for most of the running costs.

“The greatest story and symbol we could create for our project is making these Games useful, making them games that encourage people to do sport,” Paris 2024 operations director Edouard Donnelly told reporters.

A second pool used for training at the Defense Arena is set to be cut in two, with half of it to form a new 25-metre pool in the Bagnolet area of Seine-Saint-Denis.

The Seine-Saint-Denis region, the poorest in mainland France, has received around 80 percent of public infrastructure spending linked to the Games, including a new aquatics centre that was one of only three permanent new venues built.

Redistribrution

Elsewhere around the French capital, workers are pulling down the scaffolding at other temporary stadiums built at historic locations around the city which served as the telegenic backdrops for the Games.

The BMX park at the urban sports centre on Place de la Concorde has been dismantled and sent to Cluses in the French Alps where it will be used for a world BMX event in 2027.

The sand from the beach volleyball court in front of the Eiffel Tower has been sent to a sports centre in Marville in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Marville is also expected to be the final destination of one of the skate parks — if it can be dismantled without too much damage — while another is heading to southern Montpellier.

Southwest of Paris, workers have moved in to convert the mountain-biking competition track near the town of Elancourt into a facility that can be used by local riders, as well as walkers, from April next year.

Pierre Rondeau, a sports expert at the left-leaning Jean-Jaures Foundation, said the transfers of sports equipment from wealthy central Paris to poorer parts of the capital region and the rest of France made sense.

“Paris can afford to give this infrastructure away,” he told AFP. “Paris already has stadiums, infrastructures, clubs. The city is well equipped.

“It’s the rest of France and other towns that will benefit.”

Manu Bhaker at NDTV Yuva Conclave.

PT Usha had met Vinesh Phogat when the wrestler failed her weigh-in© X (Twitter)

A Kenyan man who killed Ugandan runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died from injuries sustained when he poured petrol over the Olympic athlete, the hospital treating him said Tuesday. The attack on the 33-year-old has been greeted with sorrow and anger as yet another horrific example of gender-based violence in Kenya. Police said Dickson Ndiema Marangach, 32, assaulted Cheptegei in her home in Endebess near the Ugandan border on September 1. The mother-of-two suffered 80 percent burns and died last week.

Marangach also incurred 41 percent burns, according to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret.

“He developed respiratory failure as a result of the severe airway burns and sepsis that led to his eventual death,” the hospital said in a statement, adding that he died at 6:30 pm (1530 GMT) on Monday.

“We consider his case as justice delivered,” Cheptegei’s father, Joseph Cheptegei, told AFP.

“We’re now only interested in burying our daughter,” he added, expressing exhaustion over the ordeal.

Cheptegei is due to be buried on Saturday near her family home in eastern Uganda, according to the country’s Olympic Committee.

Her father criticised officials, saying they should have done more to protect his daughter after her complaints about Marangach.

“I blame the police for taking too long to act when we had repeatedly sought their intervention,” he said.

Local media say Cheptegei’s young daughters witnessed the attack, which came just weeks after she made her Olympic debut in the women’s marathon in Paris, where she finished 44th.

Police said Marangach snuck into her home while she was at church with her children.

Her family say the couple had argued over ownership of the property where she lived with her 16-year-old sister Dorcas Cherop and daughters.

Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation reported on Monday how Cherop witnessed the assault.

“It was a horrifying scene that I don’t want to remember,” she told the paper.

“When I dashed out with a blanket so as to cover up my sister and extinguish the fire which was consuming her, Dickson kicked me, and I fell down.

“He threatened to slash me with the panga (machete) he was carrying,” she said.

Violence against women is widespread in Kenya, which saw 725 femicide cases in 2022 alone, according to the latest UN figures.

A 2023 report by Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics found 34 percent of women had experienced physical violence since the age of 15.

At least two other athletes, Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua, have lost their lives in domestic violence incidents since 2021.

Sarabjot Singh, who partnered with Manu Bhaker to win India’s first ever Olympic medal in a mixed shooting event, on Saturday said they “barely” got to train together in the run-up to their event. Bhaker and Sarabjot scripted history with a bronze medal in the 10m air pistol mixed team shooting event at the Paris Games. “My training was due at 9, hers was due at 12, individually. Mixed session lasted for 30 minutes, before which she trained separately, and I separately.” “Our conversation was usually brief and limited to ‘Apna 100 per cent dena hai (we have to give our 100 per cent)’. Apart from that, we enjoyed some banter. Sometimes I would make fun of her, sometimes she would of me,” recalled Sarabjot.

Sarabjot also revealed his longtime fandom for Yusuf Dikec and said he has been looking up to the Turkish shooting icon for inspiration since 2011.

“I have been watching his (Yusuf’s) videos since 2011. He has always been like this. He is 51 today. Even though I have tried, I could not match his perfection. If I had the chance, I would ask him what he eats?,” said the 22-year-old from Dheen village of Haryana during an interview with PUMA India.

Sarabjot said that his pistol is engraved with SSINGH30, comprising his initials and a significant date in his journey.

“I didn’t give it a name. When I achieved my personal best at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, I got the weapon engraved with ‘SSINGH30’. That is my best weapon. Because my medal (gold) came on September 30 and that was a significant achievement,” he said.

The athlete also shared that he has had to deal with his fair share of setbacks in his journey. Meditation, and a rare yogic technique called Trataka, helped him.

“The main technique is to look at the candle flame with eyes open for three minutes, and then imagine for two minutes. I used to keep it directly in front of my eyes.

“Complete darkness in the room, complete peace, silence. My eyes would water; it was not easy. The most important thing is visualisation in shooting,” said Sarabjot.

In conclusion, the Olympic medallist stated his ambition for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

“LA ’28; iska colour change karna hai (LA ’28, I want to change its colour),” said Sarabjot, gesturing toward his glittering bronze medal. 

Aman Sehrawat with Dilip Joshi© Instagram

India’s women’s table tennis team made history at the 2024 Paris Olympics, making it past the Round of 16 for the first time ever in the nation’s history. India eventually lost the women’s team battle to Germany in the quarter-finals, where Archana Kamath was the only paddler to have won a game. India eventually lost the match 1-3 and bowed out of the competition. Though reaching the quarter-finals was historic in India’s table tennis history at the Olympic Games, Kamath wanted more. With there being no guarantee of a medal in the LA Games in 2028, the young paddler has decided to quit table tennis professionally and instead study abroad.

After returning home from the Paris Games, Kamath had an honest conversation with her coach Anshul Garg about the prospects of earning a medal in the next games. The coach, understandably stunned by Archana’s stance, decided to give an honest response

“I told her that it’s difficult. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. She’s ranked outside the top 100 in the world but she improved so much in the past couple of months. But I think she had already made up her mind to go. And once she makes up her mind, it’s difficult to change it,” Garg told The Indian Express.

Archana’s selection for the Paris Olympics was a chatter of debate before the start of the quadrennial event, especially after she got the nod over Ayhika Mukherjee, who had beaten World No. 1 Sun Yingsha earlier.

Keeping aside the chatter around her selection, Archana focused on the game and did really well in helping India won the only match against the Germans in the 1-3 quarter-final loss. Archana has the backing of TOPs, Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), and other sponsors, but that isn’t enough. An Olympic medal is what drove her, but now studying abroad is looking like a better career path.

“My brother works at NASA. He’s my idol and he too encourages me to study. So I make the time to complete all my studies and I enjoy it. I’m good at it too,” she had told the paper earlier.

Archana has also been described as a brilliant student by her father, who said that the paddler has no regrets about the career choices she has made.

“Archana has always been academically oriented and all along her TT career has pursued her studies with graduation in Economics and has recently completed the requirements for a Master’s degree in International Relations, Strategies, and Securities. Having played table tennis with so much dedication and passion for more than 15 years which culminated in her representing our country at the Olympics, she felt it was time for her to pursue her other passion- full-time studies. She has taken this difficult step with absolutely no regrets and after having given her best for the sport and the country,” Archana’s father Girish said.

Financial sustainability of sports like Table Tennis is a matter of concern, especially considering the drastic step Archana decided to take after the Paris Games. But, Eight-time national champion and current Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) secretary Kamlesh Mehta feels change is taking place quickly.

“Table tennis is getting a lot of corporate backing. The Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT) has all corporate owners. Players are being supported by professional sports agencies too. There’s a lot happening and the government with TTFI is doing whatever we can to support players and create a system that makes players want to stay in the sport. The number of professional academies that have come up in the country is a testament to that. Our results on the international stage – even in youth tournaments – show that we are doing something right,” he said.

While there’s support for Table Tennis stars in terms of equipment and training, Archana’s coach Garg feels the sport is still far from becoming a platform of livelihood for players. Hence, Archana’s decision made sense to him.

“The top players generally don’t have any problem because they get a lot of support. But what about the upcoming players? Yes, they get support in terms of training and equipment. No expense is spared there but what about a livelihood? That gets difficult so Archana’s decision is understandable,” Garg said.