Asian Games Postponement: Federations Tweak Plans, Set To Field Best Teams For CWG, World Events

The Asian Games postponement has come as a huge disappointment for few athletes but it has also taken away the dilemma of National Sports Federations (NSFs), which were forced to finalise separate teams for Asiad, Brimingham Commonwealth Games and the world events. The continental multi-sport showpiece, scheduled in Hangzhou for September 10-25, was on Friday postponed due to worsening pandemic situation in China, which is witnessing a surge in omicron variant cases. NSFs such as Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), Hockey India and Archery Association of India (AAI) are now gearing up to field their best teams at the CWG and the World Championships in their respective sports.

Since the gap between the CWG (July 28-August 8) and Asian Games (before postponement) was little over a month, the sports federations had decided to send separate teams at these two big-ticket events and at the World events lined up this season.

This was because asking the athletes to compete in back-to-back global events would have been very taxing for them. It was not ideal, physically and mentally, for athletes in tough competitions such as these.

Since the Asian Games also serve as an Olympic qualifying event for sports such as hockey (both men and women) and tennis (men's and women's singles), the federations had planned to send strong teams to Hangzhou and its 'A' teams to CWG.

The wrestling and archery federations had also planned in a way that their second-best athletes were to compete at the world events that are scheduled during the year and the best players would have competed at the CWG and the Asian Games.

However, now that one big event is off the calender, NSFs have devised new plans.

WRESTLING

The WFI was to send its second-best