TEAM Fiji’s biggest challenge towards the Rio Olympics is the financial commitment required for athletes to train overseas, says chef de mission Cathy Wong.

In an interview yesterday, Wong said they lacked the required budget to send athletes to high end competitions, which had become a major shortfall towards the event in Brazil.

“At this level, we need high end competition. We are not able to access high end competition here in Fiji. So for these athletes, in order to get high end competition, they need to go where the competition is and that’s overseas. To go to these places requires money and for us the biggest challenge is financing athletes to go to these high-end competitions to make them compete there all the time,” she said.

With the State allocating $2million for the nine different sports that will be competing at the Rio Olympics, Wong said, they have had to have a separate marketing team that had to work with corporate bodies to ensure their targets before participation were met.

“We always meet our targets, but it has always been a struggle. There have always been shortfalls in the sense that athletes have always had to make sacrifices where they won’t be able to compete in a particular competition because we don’t have the money. So in reality, the shortfall for us has always been in preparation not participation because we always go to the Olympics,” she said.

She added to see the success of teams, they needed a contribution that would boost their efforts.

“What we would really like from the people of Fiji is to dig deep into their pockets to prepare the team now to go for the competition.

“We don’t need the money at the eleventh hour, we need the money now to prepare the team to go over,” she said.

A total of 89 people have been confirmed so far for the Games, 53 of which are athletes, making this the largest contingent to ever leave Fiji shores.

This is also the first time teams have had to qualify outright with the football, and the men’s and women’s rugby 7s team qualifying for a spot in the event.

Wong added this was also the first time team sports had qualified for an Olympic Games whereas previously Fiji mostly participated in individual sports and on universality places.