City misses bus for World Youth volleyball c’ship

Pune Mirror May 30, 2008

Suhrid Barua

Pune: Pune has lost out on the bid for both the 2009 World Junior Volleyball Championships and World Youth Volleyball Championships. The city missed the bus for the mega events largely due to their own doing. Revealing this, Poona District Volleyball Association (PDVA) secretary Vijay Rahirkar said that ignorance about the procedural know-how about the bidding process was responsible for the city missing out on an event of such magnitude.

“Normally the norm is that countries bid for a world meet at least eighteen months before it gets under way. So that way we should have made a bid in January-February, but we only placed a formal bid in April which clearly affected our chances,” Rahirkar said.For the stats minded, France won the bid to host the 2009 World Junior Volleyball Championships while Italy won the right to host the 2009 World Junior Volleyball Championships.

The PDVA secretary said it was for the first time that they were handling such an issue and lack of awareness about how to go about it cost them dear. “This is the first time we are handling such a thing. Also, we were not getting enough information about the bidding process despite our best efforts from us and the Volleyball Federation of India (VFI),” he said.

Once-bitten-twice shy, the PDVA now wants to ensure that it at least wins the bid for one big-ticket event next year. “We are doing our best to bid for the 2009 Asian Senior Volleyball Championships. We’ve the World Volleyball Congress happening in Dubai in mid-June and some of the VFI officials will be there to toss the same with the FIVB (Federation Internationale de Volleyball). We’ve reason to be optimistic because the indoor hall at the Balewadi Sports Complex could be used up as a venue for the event,” he observed.

Now this is a tricky one: was he sure that the city would have won the bid in the first place if the bidding process was carried out on time? “Why not. I’ve no idea about how France won the bid for the 2009 World Junior Volleyball Championships, but Italy were favoured to win the bid for the 2009 World Youth Volleyball Championships as they are also hosting the 2010 World Senior Men’s Volleyball Championships,” he added.

Can’t help asking him: so is there any loss of face for the PDVA in the way the whole issue was handled? “I don’t think so. Organisation loopholes will be there in every organisation and as I said before because we were new to all this bidding norms, we had to pay a price,” Rahirkar signed off.