Asiad 2014 (Delhi loses the bid)

[jayakris]

Well, China supports Delhi's bid over Inchoen's for Asiad 2014

TOI article

Well, what is the pound of flesh China is looking for.   I am sorry, but I am one who never ever trusts that country in anything..  There is something going on.  Wonder what? 

Jay

[amr090]

I think its pretty obvious, they want to come into our house and win every single medal and embarass throughly.  I think the Asiad in Incia will almost be a homecoming for the Chinese.  They will so throughly humiliate us in every event, it's almost better than having it in their own country for them.

[BSharma]

I do not know the real motives of Chinese support for the XVII Asian Games in India (Arun's explanation may be as good as any), but India has legitimate reasons for hosting the Games.  The Asian Games were held in India in 1951 and 1982; however, China (1990 and 2010), South Korea (1986 and 2002), Japan (1994), Thailand (1998) and Qatar (2006) have hosted the Games since the Delhi Games in 1982.  It appears that India and South Korea are in the running for the 2014 Games and India should get the nod over Korea.

I wish that Indian government can select a city other than New Delhi to host the 2014 Games thus developing sports infrastructure in another part of the country.  I think that Indian government will put up New Delhi’s bid for the Games because of the facilities it will have in place for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

[jayakris]

I am really not excited at all about 2014 Asiad, as it will be in Delhi.  If they said Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderbad, Bangalore or Chennai, I would be VERY excited.   Of course, infrastructure, except perhaps Hyderbad to some extent will need to be comepletely built from scratch, for something like Asiad.

What is the point in spending yet another pile of dough on Delhi's sports infrastructure? ..  Come on.  I hope Inchoen gets it.

Jay

[Atithee]

I am really not excited at all about 2014 Asiad, as it will be in Delhi.  If they said Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderbad, Bangalore or Chennai, I would be VERY excited.   Of course, infrastructure, except perhaps Hyderbad to some extent will need to be comepletely built from scratch, for something like Asiad.

What is the point in spending yet another pile of dough on Delhi's sports infrastructure? ..  Come on.  I hope Inchoen gets it.

Jay

Doesn't Incheon have that infrastructure already too?  Would you think the Korean government is spending another pile of dough in that case?  Of course, I would love to see another Indian city host this too but not wish that Incheon would.  Your recent stay in Korea must have impressed you a lot  .  I think India should take this chance to build a sports city and use it to train/develop its sportspersons.  Perhaps an existing academy (Patiala or somewhere else where land is cheap and aplenty) could be expanded?

[mugu]

Incheon should be having excellent facilities, but that is not (should not be) our concern. But I also hope Incheon gets it. Not that I don't love my country or my city. Or for that matter I don't want my country to come up in sports.

But bidding for games has now become a business in Indian sports. Crores are swindled with very little gain for Indian sports and the kind of money being wasted for an exercise like this is shocking. Just as we did with the Commonwealth Games (2010) bid in 2003, New Delhi has offered free air tickets and hospitality for the entire Asian Games family.

I am sure in due course it will also offer a few lakh dollars to each country for preparing for the games as well just as India did for getting CWG 2010.

We have had a longish debate over whether India should bid for Olympics or not tucked away in the Economic forum on this board quite some time back. The Indian Olympic Association has serious ambitions of bidding for the 2016 Olympics and if it fails (it will) then the 2020 Olympics. For a country which to date can only show one silver medal in an individual events in the Olympics (apart from the gold medals in hockey and three bronze medals in other individual events), there is an urgent need to improve sports facilities all around, even if they are not spread out through the length and breadth of our vast country.

This cannot be achieved by spending 3500 or 5000 crores for hosting a CWG or a similar amount or more for hosting an Asian Games. Every city tries to manage with existing facilities whenever it hosts another major games. Delhi is different. Even though Nehru Stadium and Indira Gandhi Stadium will remain for CWG 2010 (for want of space for new stadia), the renovation costs are staggering. SAI has asked for Rs 1000 crores for upgrading the facilities. Then there will be about half a dozen new facilities. Because of the facilities built up for the 1982 Asian Games, Delhi's sports standards did not improve over the past 25 years. In fact it has been beyond the means of many organisations to rent out the Nehru Stadium or IG Stadium.

The Karni Singh ranges have been a help for the shooters at the national level but that range is now outdated and needs extensive renovation. If one looks at the number of synthetic tracks around the country (and the condition of those tracks), we will appreciate how important it is for various centres to have such facilities.

Yet thousands of crores will be spent through the next 15 years and more to keep adding to Delhi's sports infrastructure without gaining much. I am sure Delhi will be a much better place to live in (and a most modern city befitting its capital status) after 2010 CWG, but that's about all; just superficial imrpovement.

The basic structure will remain, beyond the gaze of those visitors who come in: filth, choked, overflowing drains, smoke-billowing dumping yards, pot-holed roads all over, patients in the corridors of hospitals that have choked toilets, jhuggis everywhere (of course not where the Commonwealth family will have a look-in), power cuts every other day, winter or summer, extreme water shortage through the summers etc etc.

But yes, we have to host Games, it doesn't matter how people live; after all our GDP is on the up and up. We at least pretend we are a force in the world of sports; it doesn't matter it all boils down to a few shooting golds in CWG and AG. And of course a few weightlifting golds in CWG, unless the dope-testers catch our lifters!

[prasen9]

Paragraphs please.  makes it hard to read on my screen.  sorry!

-pm

[sameerph]

IOC confident of getting the nod for 2014 Asiad & has send a strong delagation to garner support for India . The bid will be decided in Kuwait on April 17.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/04/12/stories ... 371900.htm

[suresh]

Just in:

New Delhi loses out to Incheon, South Korea. Maybe, someone heard mugu's poignant plea.

[jayakris]

Thank you, Lord! .. I have almost never been happy at seeing India lose out on anything, but this time I was praying that we won't get it.  If they ask for *anything* to be conducted in Delhi, I would generally be against it.  Enough of "improving the infrastucture" again up there, while we don't even have a decent football stadium in other citires like Mumbai  (though the blame goes a lot to folks in thise cities).

Had this been any other city, I would have been sad, though.

Jay

[kujo]

Well, China supports Delhi's bid over Inchoen's for Asiad 2014

TOI article

India lost its bid despite China's support. That is crazy! 


Here is the rediff article on the bid: http://us.rediff.com/sports/2007/apr/17asiad.htm

Incheon seemed to have clinched the bid with its offer of US $20 million for training, equipment and other facilities for the participating nations.
...
...
He(Suresh Kalmadi), however, said that the IOA would cover the entire expenses of each competing nation and besides offer US $2 million for every one of them.

As mugu correctly pointed out in an earlier post:

I am sure in due course it will also offer a few lakh dollars to each country for preparing for the games as well just as India did for getting CWG 2010.

Looks like South Korea beat India by a factor of 10 (20 Vs 2 million) when it came to money on offer factor. With 45 nations participating in the recent Doha Asian games, South Korea is giving away US $900 million in total just to get the games! That is nearly Rs. 4000 crores.


-kujo

[jayakris]

India lost its bid despite China's support. That is crazy!

Hey, I asked in my first post what the pound of flesh was, that China was asking for, in reward for their support.  If we offerred some raincheck on something, they made their pound anyway, and they probably knew all along that Delhi did not have much of a chance to get it.  Think about it - whan has China *ever* supported us on something that actually was beneficial for us?

Just my cynical mind working here.

Jay

[sameerph]

Jay, perhaps yout mind is working in the right directionn. There are newspaper reports today which say that at last moment China backed out & supported Korea in the end.

Anyway, this is the view from Sports minister Mani Shankar Iyer :-

http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage ... ef2191d68a&

[mugu]

Looks like South Korea beat India by a factor of 10 (20 Vs 2 million) when it came to money on offer factor. With 45 nations participating in the recent Doha Asian games, South Korea is giving away US $900 million in total just to get the games! That is nearly Rs. 4000 crores.

-kujo

There seems to be much confusion about who offered what. In any case, Incheon did not offer a total of $900 million; it offered just $20 million (25 million according to some reports) to all countries (some reports said that funding was available only to lesser (sports-wise) countries). India's counter offer was listed as $8.8 million. There were also reports that suggested that India had offered $2 million to each country (unbelievable) and a total of 100 million dollars to all countries put together (again unbelievable). But then perhaps such an offer did not convince the majority of the countries and they went along with the more practical Korean offer.
Kalmadi has straightaway blamed Mani Shankar Aiyar for the setback since the minister had been voicing his protests against money being spent on such a scale for games like these.

[kujo]

There seems to be much confusion about who offered what.

In keeping with any true Olympic organisation's traditions, the newspaper reports are often wrong / confusing / mis-leading - as to who did what, when, where, etc.!!

I was going through a number of newspaper reports as well. You are right, it looks like the 20 Million was only offered as a whole to all the participating nations, which have not yet won a Asian medal.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.as ... ueID=30029

Prior to the final vote, Incheon promised to raise $20-million to support Asian countries that have not yet won medals in the Asian Games.

India offered a total of about 11 million dollars it seems.
http://www.indiaenews.com/middle-east/2 ... /47803.htm

'We could not have gone beyond Rs.50 crore (Rs.500 million) as there was a cabinet cap on that figure,' a top IOA official told IANS.

China's support disappeared at the last moment.
http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_dis ... Korea+Wins

The other reason is Chinese premier Wen Jiabao batted for Incheon — 80 km from South Korean capital Seoul — at the last minute although Beijing had earlier assured its

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070418/a ... 662103.asp

But the Koreans upped the bid. Insiders said they promised to spend $25 million on visiting athletes.
During the hectic lobbying, the IOA had also stressed that the Commonwealth Games four years before the Asiad would create adequate infrastructure. But there was no offer like the $1 million preparatory grant Delhi had promised every participating country during the Commonwealth bid.
Sources said another reason for Korea’s victory was that China changed tack at the last moment.

It is never easy to glean the truth, with such a multitude of partial truths and wrong information, unless you are an insider?!

cheers
-kujo