The Hindu : Sport : Broad-basing sports top priority for Watal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 03, 2005

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Sport - Sports : General

Broad-basing sports top priority for Watal

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, MARCH 2. Broad-basing sports will be top priority for Ratan Watal, the new Director-General of the Sports Authority of India.

In an informal chat with The Hindu, he said cricket enjoyed the advantage of popularity at the grass-root level, thus ensuring there was never a dearth of players and thereby talent.

Sports was not about medals and budgets but in enthusing more youth to take it up for nation building. Structuring sports into the education system and the welfare of sportspersons will be other areas he would focus on.

Sports could be used a vehicle for social causes too, such as in spreading AIDS awareness from the university level or for weaning away youth from extremism. Going by his past record, many of his plans should materialise. Seventy days was all he was given to stage an event second in magnitude perhaps only to the 1982 Asian Games. In line with the dictum displayed on his office wall — the winner always has a programme, the loser always an excuse — he showed no hesitation in accepting overall charge of the Afro-Asian Games.

The Afro Asian Games showcased the country's organisational capabilities internationally and helped India clinch the 2010 Commonwealth Games for New Delhi.

A man of vast experience and pleasing disposition, Watal also worked on the ceremonial committee of the 2002 National Games in Hyderabad. Actively associated with the Festivals of India and the USSR, he visited France, USA, Japan, Singapore and Egypt among other countries as a member of Prime Ministerial delegations.

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