Struggling to arrange funds to send its athletes to important events to gather valuable ranking points in the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Breakdance Federation of India (BDFI) has urged the Union Sports Minister, Anurag Thakur, to support 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,” said 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 said after sending the athletes to the Breaking for Gold (BFG) World Series event in Kitakyushu City, Japan, last month, his federation is struggling to send them to another such event scheduled in Brazil in April.
In Japan, Arif Iqbal Chaudhary (B-Boy Flyingmachine), Ramesh Yadhav (B-Boy Tornado) and Suraj Raut (B-Boy Suraj) were 59th, 62nd and 91st respectively among men. Johanna Antonia Rodrigues (B-Bgirl Johanna), Sushma Aithal (B-Girl Sushma) and Sidhi Tambe (B-Girl BarB) took 50th, 64th and 76th spots respectively among women.
Ranking points collected from the BFG events will help the athletes make it to the Olympic Qualifier Series (OQS). Mohanty said an overall rank of 40 should 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,” said Mohanty.