Way to go for multi-sport events: Raninder

The unprecedented move of hosting a separate shooting and archery events in India, the medals from which will count in the tally at the 2022 Birmingham CWG, could well pave the way for a new model in hosting multi-disciplinary events, said National Rifle Association of India president Raninder Singh.

The two disciplines, especially shooting, earn India a large number of medals at the CWG, but were originally excluded from the Birmingham Games. Thereafter, the NRAI and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) took a defiant stand and launched an intense campaign to put the disciplines back in the games.

Raninder played a key role, getting the international shooting federation (ISSF) and commonwealth federation involved, before coming up with the novel proposal that India will host those two events and bear the costs. NRAI will spend 10 crore from its own corpus to fund the programme, while the government will take care of the expense of organising archery.

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) has said that India’s hosting of a separate Commonwealth archery and shooting championships before Birmingham 2022 could be replicated with other sports in the future.

“This is a path-breaking proposal. The British Commonwealth is a conservative establishment and they are used to a certain model of hosting. For them to approve of this format under the circumstances, it is extremely good and open minded thinking,” said Raninder.

He said the CGF is already thinking how this model can be used to their advantage. For starters, it can give countries the opportunity to become a partial host without having to spend huge amounts of money.

“It’s good of them to understand and look at how this Indian model can be replicated in the future, starting with 2026 itself. There are only 8-10 Commonwealth nations and territories out of 78 who can finance the Games as it exists today,” he said. “There are so many smaller nations who would want to host a CWG but they do not have the finances. It gives them an opportunity. Only 8-10 nations have been hosting CWG. So you don’t have to spend and create a new infrastructure and a country can still become a host which is a huge honour.”

IOA has to be vigilant

Raninder also said that the IOA and federations have to be vigilant to protect India’s interests in global sports. “I have not seen this kind of decisive stand that the IOA president Mr Narinder Batra took in supporting the proposal,” he said. “It was a different IOA then when the vote for removal of shooting was on. They (IOA) need to be more vigilant, national federations also need to be vigilant. Here the failure was eventually pinned down to the Commonwealth Shooting Federation.”