Olympic gold-medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra has made a big statement from the athletes point of concern at the joint meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Indian Olympic Association (IOA), Government of India (GOI) at Lausanne, where he called for a larger focus on athlete involvement in affairs that affect them.
“It is athletes who suffer in case of any governance lapses and will continue to suffer if there is any suspension, derecognition or other sanction on the IOA. All of this when athletes have no control or culpability in respect of the matters that affect their careers and livelihood.” said Bindra at the meeting.
The Olympic also stressed that India have world class athletes who represent the nation at various platforms but for their growth, they ‘deserve a strong, responsible, skilled and autonomous institutional structure.’
“There has never been a more exciting time in Indian sport with the best ever performances of our athletes at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The level of government support has also been excellent and is at levels not seen before across a wide variety of sport,” said Bindra.
“The prospect of India as a sporting nation is very real and one gets the feeling that we are only getting started. The athletes and the public deserve a strong, responsible, skilled and autonomous institutional structure to take this mission forward.” he added in the meeting.
The main purpose of the joint meeting was held in order to agree on a constructive solution and establish a roadmap leading to NOC. The Olympic medallist, thus pointed to an incident wherein IOC had issued a last warning for IOA, earlier in September to get their house in order.
Bindra also went to Twitter and highlighted some points in context to the same.
For the media and sports fans contacting me here is my statement from the athletes perspective at the Joint meeting of the IOC- IOA-GOI at Lausanne earlier today ! pic.twitter.com/VZniMYWA3C
— Abhinav A. Bindra OLY (@Abhinav_Bindra) September 27, 2022
