Two senior officials ruling out any hope for Indian weightlifting won’t, of course, prevent the federation from sending teams abroad. And, indeed, it now faces a tricky situation: whether to prepare its lifters for the Afro-Asian Games (AAG) from October 24 at Hyderabad or focus on the World Championships in Canada, starting November 11. Since India doesn’t have the manpower resources to field separate strong teams for the two contests, it’s a matter of priority. Focussing on the first meet will please the bosses in both the Indian Olympic Association and the Sports Ministry, who are co-hosting the AAG. But sending a second-string team to the world meet may spoil India’s chances of earning a ‘quota’ place for the Athens Olympics. The world meet offers four berths each to the countries finishing in the top six in the men’s and women’s categories; those placed 7-10 get three, 11-12 two and 13-16 one. The WFI is looking at three berths in the women’s section and at least one in the men’s section. At the last world meet, in Athens in 1999, India had earned a single berth (women) and just about managed a wild-card entry. Karnam Malleswari went on to win a bronze at Sydney. It’s a problem, admits WFI secretary-general Balbir Singh Bhatia. ‘‘We may have to select two teams, one for each event. We’ll decide after seeing the entries of other nations’’, he said.
