New Delhi: The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) today (May 11, 2004) cleared the deck for mercurial forward Dhanraj Pillay to play in the Olympics by naming him for a pre-Olympic Games conditioning camp in Germany.

Besides Pillay, veteran forward Baljit Singh Dhillon has also been included in the camp, to be held from May 27 to June 21 at Cologne for nine key players initially.

Announcing this in New Delhi, IHF president K P S Gill said the team for the Athens Games would be named after assessment of the players at the camp.

"It's good that we have got the fund to send nine top players to Germany for specialised individual attention to prepare them for the Olympics," Gill told reporters.

"We will send the selection committee to finalise the team at Germany and announce it there."

When asked whether Pillay was certain to play the Olympics, the IHF supremo said, "The camp is not for proving Pillay's fitness or for that matter any one's fitness. We want to enhance the physical endurance of the players. It's to assess what he is capable of and what he has achieved. If his (Pillay) physical endurance is even 80 per cent, he will play."