SA Olympic body learns harsh lessons from Kalmadi episode

Believe it or not, the stench of the post-Commonwealth Games garbage cleaning can be sensed thousands of miles away here in South Africa

Believe it or not, the stench of the post-Commonwealth Games garbage cleaning can be sensed thousands of miles away here in South Africa.

SA's National Olympic Committee president Gideon Sam said his team has learnt a lesson from what happened to Kalmadi & Co following the 2010 CWG and have pulled up their socks to ensure there's no room for corruption in their federation.

CWG Organising Committee chief Kalmadi, secretary general Lalit Bhanot and five othersu00a0-- all associated with the CWGu00a0-- are behind the bars over various corruption allegations following the October 3-14, 2010, event in Delhi.

"It's a lesson learnt from the Delhi CWG and we have stringent practices in place in our Olympic Committee (to avoid anything like that happening here). We are very wary of things like corruption and very strong when it comes to governance issues. The moment we hear of something going wrong in some federation or sport, we straightaway approach the president of the respective body and ask him if there is a problem and how we can sort it out. Even today, as we prepare for an upcoming board meeting, we have zeroed in on conducting specific investigations into three sports bodies - equestrian, squash, netball as we have learnt of some issues there. We realise that after all, it's all about the athletes not about us. And whatever we do, we should ensure our athletes are the beneficiaries from it and not us officials," Sam told MiD DAY on the sidelines of the two-day Sports and Events Tourism Exchange here yesterday.

He was, in fact, surprised at Kalmadi's arrest. "I've known Kalmadi for a long time and was surprised to learn that he was arrested. I'm surprised because from our interactions he (Kalmadi) always came across as someone, who is very passionate about sport in India," he added.

About the happenings at CWG 2010, Sam said: "I was in Delhi (for CWG) and never found anything wrong there. Of course as an as NOC chief my job was to just go around and check on the facilities and venues etc and we found everything in order. But what happened behind the scenes when it came to the awarding of contracts or deals, we had no knowledge of it. That's for the organising committee to sort out. But from our perspective, the Games were well organised," he concluded.