Sports Minister Vijay Goel’s latest Rio gaffe has him at mercy of Twitterati

NEW DELHI,August 29:  Sports Minister Vijay Goel’s Rio visit with Indian Olympians has been more than just eventful. From misspelling names to confusing athletes to almost getting his accreditation cancelled for alleged rude behaviour’, Mr Goel has had a no-holds-barred battle with his critics.

But while the Olympics may be over, the minister’s Rio gaffes are not. And the trolling continues.

In what Mr Goel later explained as a “slip of tongue”, he briefed the media on Sunday after PM Modi’s meeting with “Rio gold medallists PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik”.

“PM Modi today met with Khel Ratna, Dhyaanchand and Dronacharya awardees. The sportspersons also included our two Rio gold medalists PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik,” Mr Goel was heard saying on camera.

The clip was spread like wildfire on Twitter — accompanied by jokes and comments.

Vijay Goel will give strong competition to Kapil Sharma in hosting a comedy show. #welcometocomedynightswithvijaygoel

— Nick Turrim (@mhanthung) August 28, 2016

some1 is der to give a tough competition to alia bhatt @VijayGoelBJP

— Sankalp Pradhan (@sankalp_pradhan) August 28, 2016

This adds to Mr Goel’s most-trolled list of gaffes. Earlier, he had wished good luck to track athlete Srabani Nanda, but posted a picture of Duttee Chand to go with it; he also misspelled Dipa Karmakar as “Dipa Karmanakar” on Twitter.

In his defence, Mr Goel said, “People shouldn’t make an issue out of a slip of tongue, this can happen at times. I wanted to say medallist but ended up saying gold medallist and anyway, who knows we might bag a gold medal in the coming years.”

Sarah Peterson, the Continental Manager for Rio 2016 Organising Committee, in a letter to Indian Chef-de-Mission Rakesh Gupta had Sports Minister threatened to cancel Mr Goel’s accreditation on grounds of misbehaviour and trying to enter venues with his entourage who did not have valid passes.

Rejecting the allegations, Mr Goel had said, “They should have told things orally, we are not informed anything and they wrote straight away to Chef-de-Mission. Language is also a main problem here, maybe there is a misunderstanding because of that.”

PV Sindu who won Olympic silver in badminton and Sakshi Malik who fought her way through an intense match for a bronze in 58-kg freestyle wrestling met PM Modi today, along with Dipa Karmakar and Ms Sindhu’s coach Pullela Gopichand. They were also gifted with a BMW each, with honours done by Sachin Tendulkar.