Sports Authority of India steps in to fix travel and stay issues for athletes in Japan

Indian athletes faced major problems after arriving in Japan for the Asian Games, dealing with long waits for rooms, poor food choices, and difficult travel between where they stayed and where they trained. To fix these issues, the Sports Authority of India, known as SAI, has set up new support measures on the ground for the Indian team. A special team made up of people from the Indian Olympic Association, SAI, and the Indian Embassy in Japan was stationed at the airport to welcome arriving players, coaches, and staff, help with paperwork, and hand out food and travel directions. SAI also arranged cars specifically for Indian shooters to help them travel smoothly to and from their events, alongside cars for medical teams so doctors could move quickly between venues to help players. To solve room shortages caused by the main event organizers, SAI booked extra rooms for coaches and support staff. Before these fixes, India's high performance manager Ronak Pandit shared a video online complaining about the local transport. He said he would rather ride Mumbai local trains than the slow buses in Nagoya, adding that he never knew if or when he would reach his stop. He pointed out that some shooters and coaches missed their target arrival time of 9 am and showed up at 11:30 am because of travel delays. Pandit also noted that even though this was his 15th major multi-sport event, including past Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and Olympics, he had never faced such bad transport problems before.