CYPRIOT athletes will fly to Delhi next week to compete in the Commonwealth Games, despite concerns from other international competitors over health and safety of accommodation and competition facilities.
In the coming days, 54 athletes and 20 coaching staff will fly to India to compete in eight disciplines; athletics, swimming, shooting, wrestling, archery, table tennis, boxing and weightlifting.
Cyprus Commonwealth team leader Dinos Michaelides said yesterday: “We want to go to compete, to enjoy the games and to come home with some medals.”
Asked how well he expected his teams to fare, he said that he was aiming to bring home more than six medals, with the best chances of success in shooting, athletics and weightlifting.
Cyprus has a few world-class contenders who are in with a chance of medals. Michaelides said that in the clay shooting event, 2006 Commonwealth clay shooting winner George Achilleous will be aiming for a place on the podium. In the women’s skeet shoot Louiza Theophanous, who took fifth place in 2006 is in good form and a strong contender for the top spot.
It is understood that former world cup and Commonwealth gold medallist Andri Eleftheriou will also be going for gold.
High jumper Kyriakos Ioannou, who became the first ever Cypriot world athletics championship medallist in Osaka in 2009, is in with a strong chance of a place and 200 metre runner Eleni Artymata, who won gold in the 200m and a bronze in the 100m at the Mediterranean Games in Pescara and won two gold at the 2005 Games of the Small States of Europe.
The athletes will fly to Delhi in three groups; on September 28th, 30th and October 3rd. They will return together October 15th.
Health and safety standards at the Commonwealth Games venues in Delhi were called into question after the roof of their weightlifting arena and a bridge collapsed. A number of star athletes, including the Australian team are now en route to the games after threatening to withdraw because of the inadequate infrastructure.
Asked whether Cypriot athletes were deterred by these problems, Michaelides said: “We have taken all the necessary measures about the diseases and we don’t have any problems.”
The Scottish team we reported by the Times of India as having said their accommodation was “unsafe and unfit for human habitation.”
