Multiple Indian athletes were left waiting for more than 12 hours after arriving in Nagoya for the Asian Games, with many not getting access to their rooms on time despite having valid accreditations, according to a report in The New Indian Express.
Indian athletes were left stranded for more than 14 hours without food and with minimal facilities available to them. As the hours ticked by, their wait to access rooms on the cruise ship docked in the city for accommodation just grew longer, with local officials offering little assistance.
Even those who managed to get accommodation have been forced to share rooms, with the organising committee allocating some of the available space to teams from other countries, a move that appears to have stemmed
from a serious miscalculation of the number of athletes expected to arrive, according to the report.
Indian rowers travelled to Japan in two batches from Delhi Airport on Tuesday, with the second group departing a few hours after the first. After a stopover in Bangkok, the first batch arrived in Nagoya at around 8 am Japan Standard Time on Wednesday.
They reached the cruise ship an hour later, just to find themselves waiting for the accommodation that had been promised to them, according to the report.
“We reached the facility around 9 AM JST and it is 8:30 PM now, but only a few of us got the rooms. Even those who got the rooms were asked to accommodate more athletes,” a rower said while speaking to The New Indian Express.
The rowers weren’t the only Indian athletes to face such a situation, with the shooters and two other teams also affected. The shooters were forced to check into a different hotel after the facility where they were supposed to stay was allocated to others.
Some Indian Olympic Association members were moved to a nearby hotel as well, with the medical team having to adjust with them temporarily.
