Badminton
'Pathetic treatment': MR Arjun on being forced to wait in cold Orleans night without transport
A 'sleep deprived' Arjun alleged that they were asked to pay 85 euros each for their transport to the airport and were asked to come to a location where they would get the transport at 3 AM, six hours before their flight.
FILE PHOTO: MR Arjun played just one match and lost it at the Asian Games in Hangzhou.
Indian shuttler MR Arjun ended his Orleans Masters, a BWF World Tour Super 300 event that was held simultaneously with the All England Open last week, with a forgetful second-round exit in Orleans, France. To make his experience of playing in the event worse, he was forced to wait for transport to the airport in the 'cold weather' of Orleans at night.
Before he and his men's doubles partner Dhruv Kapila leave for the Polish Open, an international challenger event, starting on March 20, they dealt with a 'pathetic treatment' being stranded in the cold weather of Orleans in France without transport to the airport.
Revealing their ordeal in three social media posts, Arjun alleged that they had been asked to pay 85 euros each for their transport to the airport as the organiser of the Orleans Masters left the matter of their transport in their own hands.
"Update on The transport at Orleans Masters 2024. We were asked to pay 85 euros each for our transport to the airport and was asked to come to a location where we would get the transport at 3 am which is 6 hrs before our flight. This was already very early for us," Arjun wrote on X on Sunday.
"Now it is 4 AM and we all are waiting at the location for the bus to arrive. On speaking to the transport manager he says the bus will come in an hour's time," he added.
"There are about 20 athletes waiting since 3 AM," Arjun revealed further.
"This is such a pathetic treatment to the athletes," he stated.
"Waiting in this cold weather at 3 in the morning for 2 hours is not a joke. That too sleep deprived," Arjun posted with a teary emoji.
Last month, Arjun and Dhruv, India's second-highest-ranked men's doubles pair, won the Uganda International Challenge.
Arjun made a comeback to the World Tour at the Malaysia Open Super 1000 in January after he aggravated his ankle injury sustained at the French Open in 2022 at the Asian Games in October.
Such types of issues in badminton are not new.
Incidentally, last year in December, Japanese star Nozomi Okuhara revealed her ordeal of travelling to India to play Syed Modi India International and Odisha Masters with the cabin driver in Delhi charging her way too much and the hotel in Cuttak did not allot her room on time, making her wait for four hours.
