Bureaucracy denies Utsob, Rafi their due in Sports Card rollout

As the first light of a new dawn broke over the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday, it was meant to signal a golden era for Bangladesh’s long-neglected athletes. Yet, while a hundred-crore festival of state honours and “Sports Cards” unfolded inside, two of the nation’s most decorated champions — boxer Utsob Ahmed and swimmer Samiul Islam Rafi — watched from the shadows, their historic achievements erased by bureaucratic oversight.

While 129 athletes were ushered into a future of professional security, these two gold medallists were “knocked out” — not by an opponent in the ring or the pool, but by a missing Government Order (GO).

As Prime Minister Tarique Rahman handed out accolades, marking a shift toward treating sports as a viable profession, the absence of Utsob and Rafi highlighted a recurring problem in the country’s sports administration: merit being defeated by technicalities.

Utsob, who punched his way to gold in Bhutan in 2025 by defeating both Nepal and the hosts, vented his frustration on social media. “The Prime Minister honoured those who achieved results since January 2025 to February 2026, yet my name is missing,” he said. “There are athletes on that list who haven’t won a single match or only got third place through a lucky draw. They’ve never even made the national team, while I’ve been there since ’21. The Federation didn’t contact me or ask for documents. It’s pure negligence.”

MA Quddus Khan, General Secretary of the Boxing Federation, said: “It’s not just Utsob; five others are missing. We submitted the list, but the authorities claimed they couldn’t find the GOs. No one goes abroad without a GO! I fought for this, but they still didn’t include him. Is this justice? It’s nothing.”

For Rafi, the sting is even sharper. The country’s top-ranked swimmer has been training in Thailand for two and a half years on an Olympic Scholarship. In April 2025, he won gold at the Malaysia Open. However, because he travelled directly from Thailand to Malaysia, a GO was never issued from Dhaka — a technicality that cost him his spot on the podium of honour.

“What can I even say now?” Rafi said. “I’ve been training so hard for two and a half years for that gold medal. Is it a lie that I achieved this for my country just because there’s no GO? It’s not like the achievement isn’t real.”

Mahbubur Rahman Shahin, General Secretary of the Swimming Federation, criticised the National Sports Council’s approach: “Everyone from the Olympic Association to the Sports Council knows he is abroad on a scholarship. Yet they ask, ‘Where is the GO?’ This is sheer whimsy. I told the Director of Sports, if our number one swimmer is left out, what will happen to his mental state? They told me this is a ‘lesson’ for us. But in giving a ‘lesson,’ you are simply demotivating the players.”

For the first time, athletes are gaining structured financial benefits, opening the door for sport as a viable profession. Yet, the exclusion of two gold medallists at the very outset casts a shadow over the initiative and risks demotivating the very athletes it seeks to uplift.