Adding to embarrassment for the country, another Indian weightlifter was today disqualified from the Youth Asian Games in Nanjing due to overage, taking the total number of such athletes to 25. Manpreet Kaur (women's 63kg) became the fourth Indian weightlifter to be disqualified as she was found to be above 17 years of age.
The participants in athletics and weightlifting in the Youth Asian Games have to be born between January 1, 1997 and January 1, 1999. Her date of birth is January 1996. Earlier, the entries of three weightlifters -- Chandrika Tarafdar (Women's 48kg), Jyoti Mal (women's 53kg) and Akshay Bhagwan (Men's 62kg) -- were rejected by the Nanjing Games organisers due to overage issue.
All the three were born in 1996. A top Indian Weightlifting Federation official blamed the fiasco to the confusion caused by India's ban by the International Olympic Committee. "We have not got the information from anybody that the weightlifters should be 16 plus years of age and not 17 plus. In normal case, the IOA passes on all these information regarding participating criteria to the national federations after receiving the invite from the local organisers (or the Olympic Council of Asia in this case). But this time we have not got any information regarding the age criteria," the official told PTI.
"In the events conducted by International Weightlifting Federation, the age limit for youth is below 18 and recently in April in the World Youth Championships our weightlifters who are born in 1996 had participated," he explained. Asked how all the participating weightlifters from other countries are born in 1997 or later, he said, "In their case, their National Olympic body must have told their national federation about the age rule. But we have not been told by the IOA about this," he said. "We don't directly communicate with the local organisers or the Olympic Council of Asia," he added.
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