BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - ATHLETES selected to represent India at the upcoming Winter Games in Sochi, Russia would do so under the Olympic flag.
According to information reaching SKNVibes, the athletes were left out in the cold after political infighting forced the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to freeze India’s membership to that body.
“India's membership in the International Olympic Committee has been frozen since December 2012, when the IOC learned that India elected officials accused of corruption to its national Olympic committee. The Indian Olympic Association will hold new elections, but those elections will not be held until after the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi,” Yahoo Sports said.
It also said that Indian athletes must compete as an independent nation without a name and would enter the Opening Ceremony under a generic Olympic flag.
SKNVibes however learned that the Indian athletes are not too happy with the decision.
"It is a sad and embarrassing situation that Indian sport has been put in," Shiva Keshavan, a luger who will compete in his fifth Olympics, told a local newspaper.
"People around the world know about the failure of our systems and about corruption and bad governance in sports. The essence of the Olympic Games is to 'represent' and I feel it is shameful and pathetic for all of us Indians that athletes may not walk under the Indian flag."
India was however warned in December that all its athletes faced the possibility of being classified as independent if the nation did not hold elections on or before February 7, the date of the Opening Ceremony.
The IOA decided at a December meeting to hold the elections two days later, on February 9 and it was asked why not simply change the date and move it a few days earlier.
But an IOA source told the AFP that "the decision to have elections on February 9 was taken at a special general body meeting last month," and we would have had to call another general body meeting to change the dates".
"We have had discussions and it was mutually agreed that we must not take decisions in haste," a source told India Today. "So it was decided not to alter the dates for the elections. [Changing the election date] may allow people to exploit legal loopholes in the decision and jeopardize the polls again."
So, rather than alter its bureaucratic procedures to save the athletes from embarrassment, the India's Olympic Committee has opted to embarrass its athletes, its nation and itself in front of the entire world.
