Pondering over the Podium!

As the world’s greatest quadrennial event, the Olympics winds to an end. For the second most populous country in the world it’s that time of the year when the whole nation deliberates, celebrates, and ruminates our small victories and major losses in yet another Olympics. If only deliberation, celebration and rumination were part of Olympics we would have returned gold in all three.

To borrow Viru’s phrase ‘Shoba de ya na’ we should accept that we are a long way from being a sporting nation. Blame it on Nehruvian policies, as is the trend these days. 70 Years ago when a nation was trying to find its footholds, all that the founders thought of, was to create institutions of academic excellence rather than creating athlete producing factories. We never believed in mass production except in one field, unlike our equally populated neighbours, who though are placed at a poor 71st in the medal per capita rankings even with 58 medals against their name. They are unfortunately in that position due to the larger numerator while we are last on the list because of a poor denominator.

With one Bronze and a Silver we are currently ranked 61 in the medals tally. I would like to compare/ analyse our performance with a couple of teams who have fared better than us, Jamaica (16) Kazakhstan (20), Iran (33), Indonesia (41), Ethiopia (43) and Independent Olympic Athletes (49). The number against them represents their rankings in the medals tally with all of them having secured at least one Gold Medal or more.

We are a developing country ahead of most of them listed above except probably Indonesia and Iran (by virtue of their oil wealth). What are we doing wrong that they are doing right? I would like to analyse the peculiar case of Jamaica, part of the West Indian group of nations who have outshone their neighbour Trinidad & Tobago in producing world class athletes. Trinidad and Tobago being part of West Indian archipelago produced the greatest cricketer I have ever seen (and yet to see) I V A Richards. The same geographical, political and economic conditions prevail in both nations yet Trinidad and Tobago are medal less in this Olympics. Ethiopia always a country on UN’s famine radar produces excellent long distance runners ranked 43 with 1 Gold 1 silver and 3 Bronze medals. I’m not sure what separates us, is it training?, the genetic makeup?, that fire in the belly? or simply the bureaucratic interventions that cripple our development.

We in India pride ourselves in producing CEO’s of big firms and celebrate the success of anybody remotely connected to India. We have been on a Mars mission. We are part of the select Missile Group. Wonder why one of us can’t do a 100 M in less than 10 secs??? Why are we not able to produce an Olympian sprinter, jumper, thrower or a swimmer? It’s not about resources if you compare us to the countries above us. I believe it’s more about our attitude to sports. Thanks to our quota raj, even a talented sportsman thinks of using his talent to land an engineering or a medical seat on sports quota and then use the same platform to secure a government job. The real passion for sports is what is missing; it’s missing because a career in sports does not guarantee a secured life in India. The scenario is changing with the advent of private leagues in Cricket, Football, and Badminton.

Physically I believe we are on par with most of the other nationalities above us on the tally. What ails us, among many things, is structured training. We also lack in identifying and nurturing talent among our 1.3 billion. We pride our self as a nation that nominates a rich citizen to the International Olympic Committee but one that cannot afford to send an athlete with his or her trainer on a business class ticket.

We are a nation which deliberates over the unfair result meted out to us in a fairly judged result. We are a nation who ruminate on what went wrong for the next four weeks and repeat the same every 4 years. What keeps us going, is making it to the top 10 in the medals tally at the Asian Games, the top 30 rankings in the Commonwealth games and above all the topping the table at the SAARC Games.

We often come up with fancy programs like the one titled ‘Road to Rio’ and we might also come up with ‘Train for Tokyo’ but it’s high time we evolve as a nation who think beyond ‘had it not been for this’ or ‘had it not been for that’ and stopped being referred to as a country that sent a contingent of ‘also rans’ but a country that refused to step down from the podium.

This Blog is a tribute to the three ladies who have made us proud this Olympics. P V Sindhu, Sakshi Malik, and Dipa Karmakar who deserves a special mention as the first female gymnast and the first gymnast to represent India in 52 Years. Wish we wake up soon and create many more Sindhus, Sakshis and Dipas before 2020.