While the whole world, especially we Indians, were busy celebrating the achievements of our Rio 2016 Olympics heroes; we are almost unaware of the controversy they were involved in.
Indian shuttler PV Sindhu won a silver medal and Sakshi Malik won a bronze.
Recently, a notice to the Indian Olympics Association has been brought in by the Li Ling, the official apparel sponsor of the Indian contingent pointing out the violation of sponsor agreement done by the athletes during the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Li Ning signed an agreement of 3 crores with the IOA for the 2016 Rio Olympics, but the agreement seemed to be violated when Yogeshwar Dutt, during his only match at the Rio Olympics 2016, was seen wearing an outfit with sail logo during the match.
While on the other hand, when we all wanted to focus on PV Sindhu’s performance, she was seen wearing a Yonex outfit most of the matches during the Rio Olympics. Along with Sindhu, Kadambi was also spotted with Yonex outfit.
Meanwhile, India’s first gymnast Dipa Karmakar before being informed by her team about the Li Ning’ agreement with IOA, she switched to the Li Ning from the Shiv Naresh kit.
The managing director of Li Ning, Mahesh Kapoor told the media that they will not blame the players but they had notified the Indian Olympic association.
On receiving the notice from Li Ning, the secretary-general of IOA notified, “we have received complaints from Li Ning about a few violations. We had spoken to the federation (Badminton Association of India) about the complaints. We did our job as we informed the federation. We were apprehensive of telling the players directly as they were doing well and didn’t want to break their momentum. I am expecting this matter to go to court.”
However, it seems that the fault is from IOA’s side as the governing body of Indian Olympic sports didn’t let India’s athlete know about the deal so without any message from the governing body Indian players started sporting different brands during their match.
IOA may take action against them, but it is purely IOA’s fault. And it is also transparent that IOA didn’t give any kits to the athletes.