Vidya Stokes gets 4th term as AHF Vice President

New Delhi, Jan 16 (UNI) Chairperson of the Indian Hockey Confederation (IHC) Vidya Stokes has been given a fourth term as vice president of the Asian Hockey Federation in the AHF's Sunday election at Kuala Lumpur.

Ms Stokes polled a record 45 votes, second highest after South Korea's Shin Bark-Jae (46), among the seven contestants.

Ms Stokes is the only women vice-president out of the five elected. Two contestants were eliminated as they failed to get the minimum qualification votes, according to a release here today.

Attributing her resounding success to the ''Indian women team's consistently good performance'' a jubilant Ms Stokes said, ''Our team is doing well and added Asian Games bronze to the Commonwealth Games silver last year. People are recognising our work.'' Due to consistent efforts based on this Committee's ideas and suggestions, more and more Asian women teams are taking interest in international competitions, she said.

''Only four teams participated in the 2002 Asian Games, and now seven at Doha. Even Pakistan women took part in a 4-Nation Cup at Kula Lumpur last year. We will soon motivate Bangladesh and Sri Lankan women teams to come up with good standard,'' she said.

Her focus now would be to make Asia dominate the global women's hockey world.

''To realise this we need more and more competitions and for India we need training of coaches, umpires, managers, besides players,'' she said.

Indian Hockey Confederation Secretary General Amrit Bose, who polled 39 votes, also got elected in the Executive Council.

UNI