Athletics rues backing

By HENRY MORABANG
IT has been a disappointing year for athletics in the country due to a lack of Government support for the sport, despite its outstanding achievement at the 2015 Pacific Games.
Delegates at the Athletics PNG annual general meeting last month expressed their disappointment over the lack of State funding after the track and field team won 22 of the 44 gold medals on offer in athletics.
Athletics PNG president Tony Green said that after the 2015 Pacific Games, funding had ceased and this impacted the sport’s ability to identify and train new athletes, as well as maintain its other programmes.
“The huge amount of money spent on team preparations for the 2015 Games and our success at those Games created the impression that APNG is a well-resourced and well-funded organisation,” Green said.
“Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Like so many individual sports in PNG, athletics is still a sport that depends heavily on volunteers and the general trend towards a more professional approach to sports administration, combined with huge success at the Pacific Games has increased expectations on athletics.”
He said a number of sports were facing these same difficulties and an excellent submission to the Government was put together by a working group of national federations and presented at the National Sports Conference in September.
“We hope that the Government gets the message that national federations need direct funding instead of everything going to the PNG Sports Foundation.
“The foundation has a role to play in working alongside, communicating with, and supporting sports but there are certain activities which the sports themselves must control.
“We have done our part in consistently producing results at the Pacific Games.
“We have become an incorporated association and were commended for producing a professional business plan.
“The time is now that Government funding be designated to Athletics PNG, so that we may appropriately staff our organisation in administration.”
Talented athletes that have been effected include Karo Iga (Central), Bonaventure Polau (Manus) and Timothy Maggie (Markham).
“2016 was a difficult year and we worked hard to retain a good number of our top athletes in the sport.
“More needs to be done to develop talented PNG-based squad members such as Idau Asigau, who surprised everyone at the Games with a fantastic 7.32m long jump but hasn’t been seen since.”
Despite these setbacks, Green expressed confidence that the consistent and long-term programmes adopted by APNG would see PNG retain its position in 2017 as the number one Pacific Island nation in athletics.
“We can and have produced results,” he said.