Asian Championship: Is it really Asian or African ?
‘Hiring Athletes’ to participate at international events has been a long running trend of oil wealthy Middle East countries, who continue to foster impressive athletes from African and South American countries to increase their medal count in international championships, including Asian Championship and Asian Games.
Athletes who are transferring their allegiance from their country to Middle East countries, particularly Qatar, Bahrain and even UAE, have been increasing over the years.
In the 2013 Asian Athletics Championship, 23 medals were won by these ‘hired athletes’, including 8 Gold medals. In the next edition, 2015 Asian Games, Gold medal count won by these ‘hired athletes’ increased to 13 with overall 21 medals. In 2014 Asian Games the Gold medal count of ‘hired athletes’ was 16 with overall 27 medals. In 2016 Asian Indoor Games 10 Gold medals out of 26 events were sealed by these ‘hired athletes’.
When it comes to records, eight Asian Games records, 10 Asian Athletics Championship records and overall 30 Asian Athletics records have been set by these ‘hired athletes’ who transferred their allegiance to Middle East, or in other words, Asian Records set by non-Asian Athletes.
These numbers itself speaks of the volume of damage it has done for Asian Athletics, with the truly Asian athletes being kept out of the podium in many regional championships. Many athletic experts describe these moves have discouraged many native athletes to continue sports as Middle East keep importing athletes for one meet after another.
“It’s funny when you think about it. The fastest man in Asia is a Nigerian; 400m and 400m hurdles women record holder is a Nigerian; Men’s 800m Asian record is held by a Kenyan; 1500 record is held by a Moroccan and 5000m record is set by an Ethiopian. To top that 4x400m Asian relay record is set by a mix of Nigerian and Ethiopian runners. It’s a mess,” said a local athlete subject to anonymity.
Hired athletes have resulted in heart breaking incidents for athletes of many countries, including Sri Lanka. Such an incident came into focus at the 2014 Asian Games where 400m runner Chandrika Subashini was in the form of her life clocking the best time by an Asian Athlete at the Commonwealth Games before going to the Asian Games. Chandrika had high hopes for a medal, but the race was won by Nigerian born Bahraini athlete Oluwakemi Adekoya shattering the 400m record set by another SL athlete, Damayanthi Darsha with Subashini finishing in a heart breaking fourth position.
Ironically no one knew about Adekoya until they arrived for the Games, as Adekoya received approval for her transfer only by 10 September and the Asian Games started eight days later. The official release of the list of athletes who had transferred allegiance only came by 30 September.
Since 2013 IAAF had approved 49 transfers of athletes, including some top sprinters like Andrew Fisher of Jamaica, who was able to represent Bahrain at the Rio Olympics just a year after he represented Jamaica. Out of the 49, 39 were to Bahrain while 10 were to Qatar.
Highest number of transfers came in 2015 with 17 of them; there were nine each in 2013 and 2014, 12 in 2016 and two by 2017 April. Apart from these there were so many transfers before 2013 which were not taken into account.
New IAAF rule freezing transfers
After years of these transfers IAAF finally decided to freeze transfers by 6 February, yet they have decided to process 12 files which have been submitted and allowed transfer of all 12 athletes, which includes two to Asia and four files remain to be processed. But one could argue that rule came a little too late as these Middle East countries has almost all the athletes they want to win many events, especially with Qatar set to host the IAAF World Championship 2019. They now have a good team, thanks to ‘hired athletes’.
Fake Date of Birth
According to top analysts it’s often found that athletes provide fake date of birth certificates when they transfer their allegiance, where their new adopted country again reduce their DOB allowing them to compete in age group competitions such as Asian Junior and World Junior Championships.
Affecting SL’s Medal Chances?
One of Sri Lanka’s prime medal hopes at the Asian Championship is the women’s 800m, but with Manal Elbahraoio who has a personal best of 2:00.82 seconds transferring her alliance from Morocco to Bahrain, the competition for the event is set to increase at the Asian Championship next month.
Manal had represented Morocco even last year, meaning both Morocco Athletics Federation and Qatar had agreed to the transfer of the athlete. But according to IAAF rules, athletes have to wait three years to represent a new country from the day s/he represented their previous country.
Nevertheless, Manal’s recent performance was not up to the mark which she had set in 2013 and that gives some breathing space for the SL athletes in the event. According to IAAF list of Transfer of Allegiance, there are at least 25 new athletes who had transferred their Allegiance following 2015 Asian Championship to Qatar and Bahrain who could feature in this year’s Asian Championship. This will only deprive Native Asian Athletes from winning any Gold medals this year.
Affecting talented local athletes in Middle East
Saman Kumara Gunawardene, SL selection committee chairman and recorder, who also works as a statistician contributing to Asian AA, described another aspect of the problem where talented athletes in the Middle East have been discouraged by this trend.
“Qatar is a country with many talented athletes within, but when imported athletes continue to represent that country in International events like this it discourages original Qatari athletes who want to excel in sports. It is the same case in some other Middle East countries too,” said Saman.
As described by Saman, due to the wealth and power possessed by these Middle East countries it’s difficult for Asian AA to take any action against them as even the World body had approved these transfers.
