NEW DELHI: After much dithering and delay the Organising Committee for the 2010 Commonwealth Games has finalised the venues for the 15 approved disciplines, retaining the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium as the venue for athletics.

There are eight main venues, apart from the Nehru Stadium. They are: National Stadium (hockey), Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium complex (cycling, gymnastics and wrestling); Karni Singh Range (shooting), Thyagaraja Nagar Sports Complex (netball), NDMC Indoor Stadium, Talkatora (boxing), Siri Fort Sports Complex (badminton and squash), Yamuna Sports Complex (table tennis) and Delhi University (aquatics and rugby 7s).

The Nehru Stadium complex, venue for opening and closing ceremonies, will also have lawn bowls and weightlifting, apart from athletics.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, the Organising Committee chairman and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president, Suresh Kalmadi, said the venues and training venues were approved on Thursday at an Executive Board meeting.

Mr. Kalmadi said that failure to get a suitable location for a new athletics stadium had forced his committee to opt for Nehru Stadium.. The earlier proposal to have a new facility at Kalindi had to be dropped since it was explained that land acquirement would take a couple of years.

The idea of having a new aquatics centre at Delhi University was to involve the student community more in the venture, Mr. Kalmadi argued. He said that the Thyagaraja Nagar Complex did not have sufficient space for an aquatics centre. Lack of space and traffic congestion was cited as the main reasons for the Talkatora pool not being utilised.

Training venues

There would be five training venues for athletics with eight-lane synthetic tracks, Thyagaraja Nagar Complex, Delhi University, Chattarsal Stadium, Games Village and Yamuna Sports Complex.

The Games Village would be at Noida `mor', near the Akshardham Temple Complex as proposed originally. There was no word yet from the Board of Control for Cricket in India about cricket being included in the Games. Mr. Kalmadi said he had written to the newly-elected Board president, Sharad Pawar, about the issue but was told that the Board would take a final decision at its next meeting.

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) had set a deadline of December 31, 2005 for the complete list of disciplines that would be formally approved at a CGF General Assembly meeting in Melbourne in March next year.

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