27 May 2009

National Games: Money well spent?

The National Sports Council released the expense details of the 5th National Games a few days back. The budget for the games was around USD $3 million (NRS 250 million) and $2 million of that was spent leaving a surplus of $1 million.

$3 million seems like an awful lot of money for a two week event. Maybe I am a bit naive, but I would think that with those sums, if it were well utilized, Nepal could probably produce an Olympic champion. The National Games is important in promoting sports and giving athletes an opportunity to compete, and politically it would be quite difficult to siphon off the funds to just one sport or one athlete, but wouldn't a Nepali Olympic medalist do more to develop sports in the country than hosting the National Games a hundred times over?