Struggling to rearrange funds to ship its athletes to necessary occasions to assemble priceless rating factors within the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Breakdance Federation of India (BDFI) has urged the Union Sports Minister, Anurag Thakur, to help the fledgling sport.
“Our representatives met Thakur in Delhi recently and gave him a representation with a request about funding for training and preparation of our athletes in the run-up to next year’s Olympics,” mentioned BDFI secretary Biswajit Mohanty.
“Our body needs to be recognised at the earliest and we badly need some Government help in order to prepare our athletes for the Paris Games.”
Mohanty mentioned after sending the athletes to the Breaking for Gold (BFG) World Series occasion in Kitakyushu City, Japan, final month, his federation is struggling to ship them to a different such occasion scheduled in Brazil in April.
In Japan, Arif Iqbal Chaudhary (B-Boy Flyingmachine), Ramesh Yadhav (B-Boy Tornado) and Suraj Raut (B-Boy Suraj) have been 59th, 62nd and 91st respectively amongst males. Johanna Antonia Rodrigues (B-Bgirl Johanna), Sushma Aithal (B-Girl Sushma) and Sidhi Tambe (B-Girl BarB) took fiftieth, sixty fourth and 76th spots respectively amongst ladies.
Ranking factors collected from the BFG occasions will help the athletes make it to the Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS). Mohanty mentioned an general rank of 40 ought to help an athlete to get into the OQS.
“We could not even send a coach with our athletes to Japan. They reached one day before the event and did not have enough time for acclimatization. Besides, they did not have a team kit. It’s hard to get sponsors and we don’t know how to send them to Brazil. A trip costs around ₹12 lakh and we need to send them to quite a few of those,” mentioned Mohanty.
