Of qualification marks, internal standards and selection guidelines

P. U. Chithra  winning 1500m at the Asian championships in Bhubaneswar_Pic courtesy G. Rajaraman.

Obfuscation is the ‘in thing’ in Indian sports administration. For years, the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) has been laying down qualification criteria for selection of teams for major international competitions. And flouting them much of the time!

Now comes this news: “The AFI will introduce qualifying standards across track and field disciplines for next year’s Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.”

Public memory is short. It seems the media’s, too. Not just the media, but that of the coaches and officials also.

The AFI stated in a Press release in June, 2014 just when the athletes were getting ready to compete in the inter-State meet in Lucknow that served as the selection trials for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, that a set of qualifying marks was being announced for the selection of the Indian team.

Complicated process

The AFI went through a complicated process of compiling the third and fourth place results of the three previous Commonwealth Games and arrived at a particular mark which it fixed as the norm for the Glasgow Games.

For the Asian Games in Incheon it was explained that only "qualifying guidelines" were being issued and not 'qualifying standard'. It did not matter; the athletes knew what to clock and how far to jump in order to make the cut.

Since the times one could remember, the AFI had some selection standards for picking Indian teams for Asian Games, Asian Championships and Commonwealth Games. You may call them ‘selection criteria’, ‘qualification standards’, ‘entry standards’, ‘selection guidelines’ etc, it all boils down to just one thing: what performance should an athlete turn in in order to make the team.

The ‘entry standards’ for Olympic Games and World Championships (and similar meets) are different. They are a set of standards prescribed by the international federation (IAAF) without which an athlete cannot hope to compete in the global-level championships. For the World championships, however, the IAAF has in recent years made concessions, allowing continental champions, defending champions and athletes who may get an invitation because of his/her placing in a ranking list, to be entered without any conditions. 

Both Olympics and World Championships have ‘distress quota’ meaning a country would be allowed to enter a male and a female athlete in an event (excluding certain specified events) irrespective of attaining an entry standard.

In contrast to the IAAF standards, if the federation and/or the ministry dilute the criteria_and they invariably do_you can make an Indian team.  The IAAF does not dilute any criteria, not even by 0.1s when a final list is released. That then is the difference between “entry standards” and “selection criteria”, the latter more often than not referred to as “qualification mark”.

Make no mistake, there would be statements by the federation that no concessions would be given and it would strictly stick to laid-down criteria etc. When the final hour comes there would be “adjustments”.

The Union Sports Ministry had followed its selection criteria in measurable disciplines from sometime in the 1970s. It was third place performance of the previous games (or last Asian championships, whichever is higher) for Asian Games and sixth place for the Commonwealth Games and the Olympic Games. Some concessions used to be given to “young and promising” athletes.

Once the IAAF brought in entry standards for Olympics, the Government criteria became irrelevant for athletics. But not for Asian Games and Commonwealth Games. In 2006, for the Asian Games, the ministry, however diluted the criteria to the sixth-place standard.

This was the signal for further dilution in 2010 when no criteria was insisted upon, and and to some extent in 2014 when the Government did not  firmly stick to any standard though the sixth-place standard was sort of benchmark. The AFI had its own set of norms, even though it was flouted often to benefit a few ‘favourite’ athletes.

“There are no qualifying standards for the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games. We will be uploading these qualifying standards on our website in a week so every athlete is clear about what performances will be considered when a squad is picked,” Adille Sumariwalla, AFI chief, was recently quoted as saying.

The selection criteria were uploaded on earlier occasions also when the AFI website became operational and the federation started utilizing it for communicating with the athletes and state bodies. 

That they were changed overnight at the Inter-State meet in 2014 at Lucknow led to much confusion as this report in The Hindu would confirm.

The AFI president said the other day that the selectors had referred to ‘internal qualifying standards’ when selecting an athlete. But this would be the first time that timings, distances and heights which athletes need to achieve will be uploaded on the website , said Sumariwalla.

There cannot be any “internal qualifying standards” that are unknown to the athletes. It will then be meaningless. The selectors could be given broad guidelines in case too many claimants are there for one or two slots in a team. These cannot be termed ' qualifying standards' when those standards have already been laid down by the international federation. A selection process or a policy has to be different from "internal standards".

What happened in the P. U. Chithra (in pic above) episode before the London World Championships was due to the complete lack of foresight displayed by the AFI. That led to the mess that brought Chithra's plight and the AFI functioning into national focus. Today, Chithra is one of the 17 athletes chosen in the initial list of 152 elite sportspersons for the TOPs funding and monthly stipend of Rs 50,000.

Neither the selection committee nor the athletes knew that becoming champions in the Asian championships in Bhubaneswar would not be sufficient to “qualify” for the World Championships in London.

The IAAF had laid down the policy of allowing a “free” entry to the continental champions, irrespective of the performance levels.  Unless there was a rider announced well in advance to this method of qualification by the national federation, there was no need to doubt the proces. Of course the AFI had the final authority to enter the athlete in the World championships.

Athletes briefed

At the end of the Asian championships in July, the AFI Secretary, C. K. Valson, briefed athletes and coaches to convey that the ‘Asian champion’ tag or the entry standards achieved earlier alone would not be sufficient for selection to the World championships and the athletes would be expected to come close to the IAAF standards at the inter-State meet at Guntur that was to follow within a week. Participation at the Guntur meet was a “must” for the qualified athletes, it was stated.

None of the athletes who attained standards prior to the Asian championships and had clinched their places in the London-bound squad competed at Guntur. From among those who became Asian champions and thus became eligible to go to London, steeplechaser Sudha Singh skipped the meet.

Heptathlete Swapna Barman competed only in the hurdles and long jump, while G. Lakshmanan, the double gold winner in Bhubaneswar improved his timing in 5000m compared to the Asian championships but skipped_understandably_the 10,000m.

Chithra was beaten to second place by junior Lilli Das, a fact that the AFI projected to rebut criticism that the federation had played ‘politics’ in the selection.

Chithra (4:1792 at Bhubaneswar, 4:28.87 at Guntur; IAAF standard 4:07.50) Sudha and Ajay Kumar Saroj, the men’s 1500m winner at Bhubaneswar (3:45.85 as against IAAF standard of 3:36.00) and Guntur (3:45.88) were axed. AFI’s anxiety to cut down on numbers after the Rio fiasco was understandable. But could downsizing have been achieved by dropping just three athletes?

Was there a selection criteria fixed for prospective Asian champions for them to become eligible for World championships?

None.

That is where the AFI made its first mistake. Then it compounded it by being selective in its application of so-called “internal standards” which apparently even the selectors were unaware of.

Now, to say, AFI had never set criteria for selection all these years and it would do it now since stung by the criticism and court case arising out of the Chithra episode is akin to having selective amnesia.

Tougher than prescribed

Once in the past, for the Sydney Olympic Games, the AFI had tried to fix tougher standards than required by the IAAF. That was by going for the ‘A’ standard rather than the easier ‘B’ standard. ‘A’ allowed you to enter more than one athlete while ‘B’ was good for just one. Eventually, the federation stuck to the ‘B’ standard though some of the athletes did return ‘A’ standards.

It turned out to be one of the most disastrous outings for Indian athletes in the Olympics with only K. M. Beenamol in the 400m going past the first round.

Selection norms are announced by federations. Some do it well in advance, some late in the day. The AFI has done it both ways in the past. Not surprisingly, the AFI has tended to fix norms looking at the standards of its own athletes rather than what could await them in actual competitions.

Sometimes this may click as it did in 2010 for both CWG in New Delhi and the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.

The Government had notified in 2015 that for all the multi-discipline games the sixth-place standard would be applicable for measurable sports. This was a sequel to the drama that involved the clearance of the Indian contingent for the Incheon Asian Games.

The IOA proposed a 942-member contingent which was cut down drastically by the ministry initially. But after the Prime Minister’s intervention, a contingent of 679 including a 56-member athletics squad, was approved. The track and field athletes won 13 medals including two gold, the lone individual gold coming from discus thrower Seema Punia. In Guangzhou in 2010, Indian athletes had won five gold medals.

Will it be sixth-place criteria?

Will the Government stick to the sixth-place criteria next year? Or will it be another concession, as in 2006, to boost numbers so that someone would be able to say “we send a 1000-member contingent”!

Looking at the performances in 2016 and this season the sixth-place criteria should not pose much problems for Indian athletes in established events for both Commonwealth Games and Asian Games. This is presuming that the AFI itself would not make it a lot stiffer than that when its think-tank sets out to formulate criteria. Anything below sixth-place would be making a mockery of this business of "laying down standards".

The crucial question would be how much active would the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) be in the run-up to these two games? Out-of-competition testing that should start from November this year at least, should hold the key.
The Commonwealth Games are to be held in Gold Coast, Australia, from 4 to 15 April, 2018 while the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 18 August to 2 September.

(amended 18 Sept 2017)