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18-year-old long jumper M. Sreeshankar, who has been making waves in the junior circuit, is set to have his dream of representing the country at the Commonwealth Games cut short as his accreditation was not done on time. High jumper Siddharth Yadav, who recently became only the third Indian to cross the 2.25m mark, is also set to miss out on the Games.
Sportskeeda has learnt that the issue is not 'entry' related as has been reported widely. Instead, it is an accreditation related issue. The accreditation for athletes for the Commonwealth Games started in October and ended on 20th November, 2017. But it is not ideal to conduct trials and select the entire contingent so early as in such cases, the athletes' performances might go down by the time the event starts.
Similarly, for the Asian Games, the applications for accreditation closes in July whereas the trials will only be held in July, exactly a month before the Games so as to ensure the athletes who are closest to their best levels get selected.
Now, in October-November, the AFI had sent the names of around 115 athletes which included the names of Vikas Gowda, Siddharth Thingalaya, neither of whom made it to the Games this year.
However, back at that time, neither Sreeshankar nor Siddharth Yadav was in the fray back then. No one had even thought that these two athletes will produce performances that would land them in Gold Coast. Nonetheless, they did exceedingly well at the Federation Cup, with Sreeshankar falling just 1 cm short of the qualification mark (he jumped 7.99m whereas the qualification mark was 8m) and Siddharth qualifying with a jump of 2.25m and the AFI decided to name them in the contingent.
The AFI had sent Sreeshankar and Siddharth's entries on 7th March, which was the last date, but because their accreditations were not complete, their entries have not been accepted. But it has been further learnt that the AFI is 'fighting hard' as they believe that Sreeshankar is a real 'medal prospect'.
