The Tribune: Qualification criteria for lifting, hockey in CWG

By Sabi Hussain

The road to medal success at the Commonwealth Games has become tougher for athletes in certain disciplines. For the first time in the Games’ history, the 2018 CWG in Gold Coast, Australia, will have a qualification system for badminton (mixed team event), hockey, weightlifting, basketball, rugby sevens, beach volleyball and para-sports (team events).

In the case of weightlifting, the Commonwealth Weightlifting Championship in Gold Coast from September 3 to 9 will act as a qualifier. The gold medallist of every weight category will directly qualify for the Games while other places will be decided based on the world rankings as on December 31, 2017. The rankings will be calculated after taking into account the quota allotted to the host nation (Australia) and wildcard entries.

Also, as per the rule change by the CWG organisers for weightlifting, the number of participants in each weight category will be restricted wherein a participating nation will be allowed to send one entry per weight category. Earlier, a participating nation was allowed to send two entries for each weight category.

Similarly, in badminton, basketball and hockey disciplines, the world rankings would define the eligibility criteria. Earlier, the national Olympic committee (in India’s case, the Indian Olympic Association) used to send the entries of athletes as per the quota allocated to the participating nation by the organisers.

IOA secretary general Rajeev Mehta recently wrote a letter to all the national sports federations, informing them about the qualification criteria.

“This has reference to letter by the CWG Gold Coast organising committee, the committee has requested to submit the estimation of number of athletes participating in the Games. The sports disciplines that will be administered through qualification criteria are badminton (mixed team event), para-sports (team event), hockey, badminton, weightlifting, basketball, rugby sevens and beach volleyball. Other participating sports have been put in prime athlete allocation category which will be a total of 135 athletes,” the letter stated.