India's chief athletics coach Bahadur Singh today said that shotputter Inderjeet Singh's grievances will be taken care of by the Athletics Federation of India and other competent authorities so that he can concentrate on his training.
Recently, Olympic-bound Haryana shotputter Inderjeet threated to pull out from TOPS scheme if he did not get 30 lakh for foreign exposure with his personal coaches duo of Shakti Singh and Pritam Singh.
The chief coach who is also a former shotputter however assured that Inderjeet would get all the help from the government.
"It's only a matter of time that he will be given the financial assistance that he needs. I don't see anything wrong if he wants to take his personal coaching staff. It's a positive decision. He can go anywhere he wants, it's his decision," he added.
Bahadur also said that nowadays Indian athletes atleast try to compete unlike during his playing days when people like him just added to the numbers and ended up with horrifying performances at the world level.
"We go there to compete and not just to participate unlike in our times... We are doing quite well in major competitions."
Bahadur also said the standard of athletics can only go up to Olympic standard if the government adopts a one village, one playground scheme.
Referring to Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana, the former Asian Games gold medallist said a village can only become "Adarsh" (ideal) if they have a good playground facilities, something that will help spotting the talents at the grassroots level.
"Our athletes now have been doing really well, the standards have gone really up in recent past but the real problem lies in villages. Go to any village and you won't find a playground so where the athletes will come from," Singh lamented.
Referring to the model adopted by China, he said: "Look at them. If a child spends eight hours in school, four hours he spends playing, running in track suits," he said appealing the government to come forward and take it up in an urgent basis.
