CWG-bound shooters and wrestlers are still waiting on their respective visas

CWG-bound shooters and wrestlers are still waiting on their respective visas

11

Written by: SportsCafe Desk

no photo

With less than two weeks left for the 2018 Commonwealth Games which will be held in Gold Coast, the Indian Shooting and Wrestling contingent still remain without visas. A tentative number of 109 visas are yet to be ‘approved’ for the athletes and support staff for the tournament.

The Indian Olympic Association is facing a battle against time ahead of the upcoming 2018 Commonwealth Games which is scheduled to begin less than two weeks later on April 4 in Gold Coast. The IOA needed to sort out the visas of athletes as well as support staff and coaches who will accompany the athletes to the games in Gold Coast.

TOI procured a list of 109 names which were submitted to the IOA in order to get their respective visas approved ahead of the competition. The long list involved names of huge stars like Olympic medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar, women wrestlers Babita Kumari, Vinesh Phogat and Pooja Dhanda, men’s hockey player Lalit Upadhyay, women’s hockey team player Savita, badminton singles specialist Ruthvika Shivani Gadde, cager Amritpal Singh and shot-putter Tajinder Pal Singh Toor, among others.

Things are even worse for the shooting contingent that will travel to Gold Coast as almost every single participant was yet to receives their visa. Some of the names of the shooters include Chain Singh, Jitu Rai, Sanjeev Rajput, Gagan Narang, Deepak Kumar, Anish Bhanwala, Neeraj Kumar, Mohd Ashab in men’s event and Anjum Moudgil, Tejaswini Sawant, Heena Sidhu, Seema Tomar, Mehuli Ghosh, Manu Bhaker, and Shreyasi Singh in women’s category.

As far as coaching staff and supporting staff were concerned, quite a few names were on that list as well. Hockey team's analytical coach Christopher Nicholas, women's coach David Ian John, boxing men’s foreign coach Santiago Daniel Nieva and women’s coach Raffaele Bergamasco (women), basketball team’s head coach Zoran Visic and women’s team coach Rajinder Singh are still waiting for their visas. The total strength of the Indian contingent is 328 (222 athletes and 106 officials).

Indian Sports minister and former Olympic Silver medalist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is yet to declare the entire list as he was currently finalising the names in Bangalore yesterday.

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all