Forty-four years after Nepal started taking part in the Olympics, Sangina Baidya became the first South Asian woman to qualify in taekwondo this year.

But even before leaving for Athens, Sangina had scored another first. She was the first Nepali athlete to generate corporate sponsorship that covered most of her expenses at the games. In an unprecedented show of solidarity towards an Olympics hopeful, six Nepali corporate houses came together to meet 85 percent of her expenses and launched interactive media campaigns to boost her morale.

"We wanted to encourage Sangina to do her best and keep the flag flying," says Suraj Vaidya of the Vaidya Group. But for others in the consortium, having their name associated with promoting Sangina was part of their own marketing strategy. Tarun Tuteja, senior product manager at Dabur Nepal told us: "We were largely driven by the huge marketing opportunity of Sangina's high-profile competition in Athens. However, we also wanted to help promote sports in the country."

As it turned out, Sangina was beaten 4-0 by Hsin Chen Shih of Chinese Taipei in the prelims of the Women's Under 49kg in Athens. Even so, she has been appearing regularly as a model for various consumer and food products.

Sports sponsorship is relatively new in Nepal. As the cost of buying rights to broadcasting events like the Olympics and the football World Cup soars, media houses have sought local sponsorship to defray the expenses. Nepal Television had to pay the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union $55,000 for broadcast rights for the Olympics this year. Of the total, nearly half went to pay for the technical charges. Even so, Athens showed that corporate sponsorship for sports is available and can be channelled for promotion and raining in future. The challenge that sports bureaucrats face is finding ways to tap these fund.

Rajesh Lal Shrestha says his motive for sponsoring Sangina was not profit. "Sangina gave us something to cheer about at a time when most news was depressing, and even though she lost in Athens, there was reason enough to celebrate," he added. Ravin Lama of The Himalayan Times agrees: "The motive behind our support to Sangina was patriotic. She set an example for others to excel and our papers wanted to spread this positive message to the larger community with louder affirmation."

Sangina herself was overwhelmed by the support she got, and it wasn't just the money to pay for her expenses. "The letters of encouragement that the advertisements generated and the publicity was very encouraging," she says. "In the future, the sponsorship could pay for international exposure for Nepali athletes." Sangina denies that the extra media attention and the expectations of the sponsors put extra pressure on her, but sports psychologist Ramesh Khanal feels that in the future athletes should be provided professional counselling in order to deal with stressful competitions. "In Sangina's case I do feel the media was over-ambitious, and this would have inevitably increased Sangina's psychological stress."

Will the trend towards sponsorship in Nepali sports make it more commercial, or will it actually help the development of sports? Kishor Bahadur Singh of the National Sports Council thinks the government is cash-strapped, so "private corporate sponsorship is a very welcome development".

Truly, sport is a medium that manages to bring forth national pride and distinctiveness. Hence it becomes more essential for sports management in Nepal to remain free from constant altercations and controversies. There is a need for all parties concerned to work in collaboration with non-government organisations and for private bodies to encourage and uplift this sector.

But there are concerns that the sponsorship money may have been better spent on training, rather than on media ads and commercials. Also, the Nepal Olympic Committee often has been accused of sending more junketeering officials to Olympic venues than athletes. Rukma Shumshere Rana, president of the Nepal Olympic Committee, says Nepal did not have to incur any expenses for the officials. "The International Olympic Committee paid for them, and it was important for them to be there to network and be represented," he says.

(Stuty Maskey, Rena Shrestha and Bandana Gyawali wrote this article)