Hyderabad: At the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) Training Centre (STC) in Gachibowli, archers routinely break off practice to wade through overgrown grass and hunt for stray arrows, a scene that sits oddly with the city’s ambitions of one day hosting Olympic events.
The archery ground and two athletic tracks at Gachibowli Stadium featured prominently in a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) inspection carried out between December 2022 and February 2023, whose findings were released recently. According to The Times of India, more than three years on since the inspection, little has changed.
The two synthetic tracks, one run by the Sports Authority of Telangana (SATG) and the other by SAI, remain cracked and prone to waterlogging, forcing athletes to train elsewhere: Gopichand Academy for sprints, Kokapet for endurance runs.
SAI, responding to the CAG in 2025, said the fields of play (FoPs) were roughly 20 years old and outside its direct control, since its memorandum of understanding with the state government did not allow major investment such as re-laying tracks. It added that the grounds were occasionally rented out for private events, resulting in littering.
Synthetic tracks typically need resurfacing every seven to 10 years, but Gachibowli’s has gone without a major upgrade for over two decades, according to Asian Games bronze medallist Agasara Nandini, who said the problem has been worsened by stages erected for private functions close to the track. A Sports Authority of Telangana official said upgrade work is currently under tender, with the renovated track expected by March.
The Gachibowli hockey turf, separately flagged by CAG for cracks held together with metal wire, has since been redone ahead of recent World Cup qualifiers.
Nationally, the same CAG audit found sports and medical equipment worth Rs 1.7 crore lying idle across 12 SAI units, and 206 coaches posted where their services were reportedly underused, prompting a recommendation that SAI rationalise coach deployment based on actual infrastructure and athlete numbers.
