Olympic Quest: Why India does not win medals
Athletes need more support, and India has yet to establish itself as major sporting power
This is not a postmortem. As John F Kennedy once said, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan and we Indians are repeat offenders, celebrating success with a naked thirst that does not ease its vice-like grip on the binary of black or white. You are either a champion or exiled from public imagination for the next four years when the dance of expectations resumes.
The athletes, those who came achingly close or others who reached Paris on the back of celebrated reputations only to fall short of the podium have their demons to face. Barring Neeraj Chopra’s silver, and five bronze including the men’s hockey team, the pot at the end of the Paris Olympics was embarrassingly empty.
But when a non-Indian Twitter user asks, ‘Why doesn’t India win medals at the Olympics?’ the binaries and the boxes all become one medley for only an Indian knows the complexity of what you see is not what the athletes get. Those who win do so despite a system where the role of politicians in Indian sport is as insidious as the roots of a giant tree that keeps spreading because it can.
Transparency or accountability
These politicians across party lines run most of the country’s sports federations as their fiefdom sitting on a post for decades stonewalling and blocking sportspersons who have a genuine stake in sport, from making a difference. The show begins with office bearers at the district levels and there is no fair game over transparency or accountability.
Many were in Paris for a junket – the Indian contingent had 117 athletes but 140 ‘support staff’ – but no resignations have come for their federation’s no-show. Instead like flies, they swarm the few who came back victorious.
The elephant in the room though remains the ‘system.’ India is a country of contradiction, here the infamous system works equally hard to fail you. In Paris, it showed us the face of both defiance and defeat. Wrestler Vinesh Phogat who was flung on the mat by the police as she protested sexual harassment by her federation chief Brij Bhushan Saran Singh, a BJP parliamentarian, showed up.
Last year Phogat camped for weeks on the streets of Delhi begging for justice. No one in power heard her. So, she trained on Delhi’s gritty streets and caused the biggest upset in the wrestling world at the games until circumstances defeated her. Rules are rules and, in the end, 100 gms were more sacrosanct for IOC officials than a convicted Dutch child rapist who participated in the games.
Political putdowns
In tears, as she landed back in India, she was ironically escorted to her village by the same police as she was given a champion’s welcome. In the end, Phogat’s loss at the Olympics is a far bigger win than if she had won a medal. She has rattled the system and even if she stands in the forthcoming Haryana elections, her role in shattering sport’s glass ceiling will not be forgotten by aspiring young girls.
No country can be a sporting success without its women partaking in the sporting story. Apart from Phogat even a double bronze medallist in Paris, shooter Manu Bhaker did not escape political putdowns in the past.
A sporting culture is not an Indian culture. For athletes to succeed there is a reconciliation, fitness and fighting the powerful are two sides of the coin. Another bronze medalist at Paris, shooter Swapnil Kusale is a travelling ticket examiner (TTE) for the Indian railways. For the past nine years, his promotion was dismissed rudely but as he stood on the podium in the 50m rifle, a double promotion was grandly announced.
For two weeks we pretended to be a sporting nation and demanded more than we gave in return. In the words of tennis star Rohan Bopanna, ‘India is not a sporting country, to be honest, we go to watch the celebrity of the sport. I have gone to numerous companies asking for sponsorships and they have declined because tennis is not shown in the country.’
With back-to-back bronze medals at Tokyo and Paris, Indian hockey – for long an emotion – is back where it belongs. But let’s face it, now that the Olympic euphoria is over, an India- Afghanistan cricket match will be watched with more intent than a hockey series. Lamenting a poor show is easy, admitting to being a part of the problem will need India to come out of its comfort zone.
Every athlete has his own journey and collectively they take us on stage but if the lights flicker, we question their dream. India has no bench strength when it comes to sporting heroes in any sport other than cricket.
Our attention, every four years zeroes in on celebrated names and we chase them and their reputations with a passion till they pass, or we fail them. A single bronze medal is celebrated with embarrassing refrains of ‘historic’ while countries like South Korea – nowhere near China or the US in the medal tally – chewed and spat out semifinal slots with ease.
All is not lost
Corporates and foundations are slowly correcting the lifelong damage done to Indian sports by its politicians and bureaucracy and disciplines like badminton are now well-funded. Lakshya Sen’s choking in the medal rounds however brings out the importance for coaches too to understand the importance of mental health training.
A special mention to the state of Odisha which has brought Indian hockey back from the edge of the wilderness. It takes a village and there is finally a recognition that for India to compete with the best, it needs investment, infrastructure, and most importantly, a mindset.
Schools, where it all begins need to nurture talent even at the expense of studies and society needs to be accepting of those who play hockey rather than opt for engineering. It is however not just that India needs to make sports a subject at the school level, it also needs to make sports safe at the grassroots.
The results will not be overnight, but they will come once a setup dominated by former athletes but run by professionals is in place. Here, there is no place for politicians.
Until then all talk of India hosting the Olympics is an ego trip. Countries with an existing infrastructure and a buffer of athletes showcase their best. India is not even a developing sporting power, what then does it want to showcase?
It first needs to give a clarion call for stadiums to be filled with athletes so that all eggs are not in one Neeraj Chopra basket. And if an athlete has a bad day, all is not lost. Only once, we normalise the Tricolour on the podium can India look at welcoming the games. Till then, its politicians and fans remain mere pretenders cheering and demanding as though in a blood sport, their pound of flesh.