Sportz999: Recent Episodes
Sportz999
Sportz999 brings South Asian sports to Canada. Our special podcast series will look deeply into World sport, Canadian Sport and also focus on the South Asian community in Canada, especially in the province of Ontario.
One of the fastest athletes in the Indian circuit, Dutee Chand found herself amid yet another controversy after opting to sell her BMW worth Rs 30 Lakh. Chand wanted to sell off the car in order to arrange funds for the training. The Department of Sports and Youth Services, Odisha, said it had given a Rs 3 crore incentive for her Asian Games 2018 performance, Rs 30 lakh for training and financial support between 2015-2019 and Rs 50 lakhs to train for the Tokyo Olympics. The Odisha Mining Corporation also gave her a Group-A level officer’s salary of Rs 84,604 per month. They also provided her with Rs 29 lakh for training and financial assistance.
Manipulation of date of birth by athletes in order to qualify for participation in junior competitions is the bane of Indian sports. The problem is spread across all sports and it happens with the blessings of parents, coaches and school authorities. Age fraud is as serious an offence as doping. In the case of doping, there is the World anti-doping agency code which books and punishes dope cheats. In the case of age fraud, it is high time the government enforces a code of conduct to deal with it.
It is always sad when sport gets tainted by allegations of match-fixing as it happens on and off in cricket. Lately, Sri Lanka has accused it’s 2011 World Cup team of ‘fixing’ the final against India and allegedly conspiring to lose the match intentionally. True or not, we will never know. Such are the laws and one does need evidence. In a changing sporting environment, in the arguments and accusations being levelled at cricket and its iconic stars, maybe, it is time to place the argument of legalising sports betting, especially in India.
American sprinter Christian Coleman has been suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit for missing doping tests. Coleman wrote on Twitter that drug testers were unable to find him Dec. 9 while he was shopping at a nearby mall for Christmas presents.
In our first podcast, sportz999 Editor Sundeep Misra, noted sports medicine expert Dr PSM Chandran and veteran journalist Arup Ghosh discuss how the needle of suspicion on drug abuse is never very far from the world of athletics.