Indian female team physio will play role of manager during ninth Senior Artistic Gymnastics Asian Championships in Doha

Following the recent alleged harassment of female athletes by the coaching staff of the Cycling Federation of India (CFI) and the Yachting Association of India (YAI) in two separate incidents on a foreign tour, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) issued fresh guidelines to all National Sports Federations (NSFs) on Wednesday.

The new guidelines will aim to ensure the safety of female athletes during national camps as well as international competitions.

The SAI guidelines for the NSFs state will make it mandatory to have women coaches/officials accompanying national female teams during domestic and international travel. The strength of the women coaches/support staff in national camps will also be increased.

This could be one of the reasons why Indian team physio Kanika Taneja will also act as the female team manager of the 10-member squad at the ninth Senior Artistic Gymnastics Asian Championships.

The contingent includes five female athletes of the national gymnastics team who will compete at the event in Doha, Qatar from June 15 to 18. The continental competition is a qualifying event for the World Gymnastics Championships. There are also four male coaches and three support staff in the Indian contingent.

The SAI said in a statement:

"The contingent has a women's team manager who is also the physiotherapist. It is the primary responsibility of the NSF to select teams going for training and competitions. The gymnastics team was selected by the federation but funded by the SAI.”

No female official or member of the coaching staff accompanied the national gymnastics team for the FIG World Challenge Cup competition held from June 7 to 13 in Croatia.

Coaches Ashok Kumar Mishra, Ashwin Kumar Samantaray, Bishweswar Nandi, Rohit Jaiswal and Vishal Bhardwaj (physio) were the male officials who accompanied the Indian team to Croatia.

The SAI guidelines also stated that a male or female should be appointed in all NSFs camps and foreign exposure to ensure that SAI guidelines are being followed. This will help enforce the standard operating procedures to prevent sexual harassment in sports.

Gymnastics team for the Asian meet

Women: Pranati Nayak, Ruthuja Natraj, Pranati Das, Papiya Das, Protistha Samanta

Men: Gaurav Kumar, Abhijeet Kumar, Dip Roy Chowdhary, Satyajit Mondal, Yogeshwar Singh

Coaching staff: Bishweshwar Nandi, Rohit Jaiswal, Ashok Kumar Mishra, Praveen Sharma, Kanika Taneja (physiotherapist), Praveen Dhage, Pawan Bhoir