Olympic bronze medallist Lovlina Borgohain was left stranded for nearly an hour after she decided to leave the Commonwealth Games (CWG) opening ceremony midway on July 28. Lovlina was tired and had a training session next morning (July 29).
The ceremony on July 28 night went on for close to two hours and long with Lovlina, another member of Indian boxing team Muhammad Hussamuddin decided to leave early for the Games Village from the Alexander stadium.
“We are leaving now. We want to train in the morning as we have a bout the day after. The ceremony will go on for long so we thought we should leave. We asked for a taxi but we were told that it was not available,” the 24-year-old told India Today.
Lovlina and Hussamuddin were left clueless as they were unable to book a taxi on their own and get back to their accommodation. They had to take the first bus bound for the village. The Indian delegation has been allotted three cards by the CWG organisers but the drivers were unavailable because the athletes and officials had taken the bus to get the venue of opening ceremony. Also, they faced problems because no cash travel was allowed.
"We were in the middle of the ceremony and I got to know later that she and another boxer left early. We all came in buses and taxi option was not available at that time. They shouldn't have come if they wanted to leave early.
"There were so many athletes who decided not to come as they had training or competition in the morning, which we completely understand. I will be speaking to the boxing
team on this matter," said India’s Chef De Mission Rajesh Bhandari.
Earlier Borgohain had levelled serious accusations against Boxing Federation of India (BFI) for not letting his coach Sandhya Gurung and her strengthening coach. After her tweet, Dronacharya Awardee Sandhya was allowed entry into the Games Village.
