Should the AAFI set up a Truth Commission?

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Bangalore: Just a month ago, a beaming Indian athletic contingent returned home to rousing welcome from Jakarta with a clutch of medals and the tag which pronounced them as the continent's No 2 at the Asian Track Field championship.

There were effusive and self-praising lectures from the Amateur Athletic Federation of India's (AAFI) top brass as to how well the training methods and their hard work had paid off and how well equipped are the Indian athletes for the Sydney Olympics.

The Indian athletes are now trudging back home from Sydney not with glory but with shame and there will be no official around to explain their dismal show .To hell with what they did, we have few more days to enjoy in Sydney," will be the typical reaction of our self serving officials.

But how could things go so wrong at the Olympics? The performances in athletics were pathetic and our men and women, failed to match even their performances, created on the home turf.

Let us take a quick look at what they did. Shakti Singh, the mighty shot putter, who set up" a new Asian mark of 20.60 metres at the domestic circuit meet in Bangalore in July, came up with a throw of 18.40 metres in the Olympics and finished 17 in his group of 19.

Javelin thrower, Jagdish Bishno recording 70.86 metres finished 15th in a field of 17 in the first round. Paramjit Singh, the man who broke Milkha Singh's record in the 400 metres, came a poor sixth in the heats and heptathlete, Pramila Ganapathy finished 24th and rest simply never crossed the first round.

The only silver lining was K M Beenamol's gallant run. She became third Indian woman athlete after P T Usha and Shiny Wilson to qualify for the semi-finals of the 400 metres. The Kerala girl, in fact headed the qualifiers list ahead of the gold medallist Cathy Freeman of Australia in the first round, clocking 51.51 seconds.

The Indian performance in Sydney is all the more glaring, given the kind of hype they received for superb" efforts at home, where records fell like nine pins. Obivously this gives rise to suspicions of drugs, which the AAFI had always strongly denied.

But there cannot be a wholesale in drop in performance, and this AAFI have to explain as to why? Better still, they better not, because they will come with vague statistics. What we need is an impartial inquiry commission, which can go deep into the debacle at the Sydney Games.

How about our own Truth Commission? Truth never hurts, ask AAFI, the guys there have thick skins.