TOKYO 2020 - WHY DID WE STOP AT 7

 

 

 

The Olympic Games 2020 are now done and dusted and the Indian contingent gave its best performance till date and bagged 7 medals, 1 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze, but we are worth much more. A country of 1.37 billion people cannot be satisfied with these numbers. If one in every 6 person in the world is an Indian then why is our proportion of Olympic glory so anaemic?

 

There are several reasons for this, some which we can rectify and some which we can't. We cannot change our genetic composition and neither can we produce designer babies who will be the Olympic champions of tomorrow. But there are many things that we can do or have just started doing:

 

Malnutrition among children - Infancy and childhood are vital for physical and mental development of an individual and if this foundation is not laid we cannot expect to produce champions out of such children. Only healthy mothers produce and nurture healthy babies and only healthy children of today will become champions of tomorrow. So both maternal malnutrition and child malnutrition should be urgently addressed.

 

Less importance to physical fitness - Our children are either underweight or obese and the Physical Training (PT) classes in schools are considered as a waste of time by most parents. They fail to realize that only a healthy body can house a healthy brain and only when the two come together champions are produced, not only in sports but in all spheres of life.

 

Parental attitude towards sports - When we were children, for our parents sports was at best a healthy pastime. They could never imagine it to become our passion and our profession. The kids in India are not encouraged to go out and play, they are rather expected to sit at home and study. Television and mobile phones have further made them indoor creatures. Parents are keener on making engineers and doctors out of their children rather than sportsmen. The prevent idea till very recently was 

' Likhoge parhoge banoge nawab

  Kheloge koodoge banoge kharab'

I must say we have come a long way from there and unhesitatingly I will give credit for this to Cricket and BCCI. By giving a livelihood to so many people through IPL and other tournaments it has inspired many parents to think otherwise and support their children to pursue their dream in sports. Almost 10 years after the IPL, leagues for Kabbadi, Hockey, Boxing Badminton and Wrestling came into being and let’s hope these leagues can change the future of these respective sports as the budding local talents share locker rooms with talented world champions.

 

Finance - It is only the recent government which has shown some inclination towards financing sporting preparations, training, coaching and events. Still we in India spend only 3 paisa per day per capita on sports while China spends Rs. 6.10, which is 200 times what we invest! In 2018, the global sports market was valued at approximately 471 billion U.S. dollars and the United States accounted for a 32.5 percent of its share. China represented 12.7 percent of market. No wonder these two nations were on the top of the Olympic medal tally.

 

Sponsorship: The industry in India is too myopic and can't see beyond Cricket and consequently the other sports struggle to get sponsors. This was not the case in the past. Organizations like Railways, Indian Oil, Indian Airlines etc had their hockey teams that used to sponsor a lot of other sportspersons.  The football league had teams from Bengal Nagpur Railway, J.C.T. Mills Phagwara, Sikh Regimental Centre Meerut and many more. Imaging the plight of the Bronze winning Men's hockey and 4th position holders Women's hockey teams; they had no sponsors and the farsighted Odisha state government had to sponsor them. Promoting and marketing a sport is very important for the sport to gain popularity in any country. Just like the BCCI sponsored IPL has changes the quality of Cricket and mental attitude of our cricketers other sports should arrange more national tournaments where international players should be invited to participate. The raw local talents will immensely benefit from these close interactions.

 

Assured future of comfort: Except top players who win medals, others live a life of neglect and penury. At times we have seen even medal winners in the same sorry state in their ripe old age. Facilities and recognition at tier 2 and 3 level is almost zero. Everyone knows that hardly few would succeed in winning medals. Then why take the risk? We need to popularize sports and take them to our small town and villages and find sponsors for them so that players and coaches can make a living out of sports. This will enable us to put more athletes in contention across many more sporting events and even if one athlete excels, he/she will have a Kapil Dev effect on his/her sport. Conversely when 21 years old Special Olympics double gold medalist Rajive Singh dies of disease and penury in Ludhiana how can this encourage would be sportspersons?

 

Infrastructure: World champions in any sports are nurtured from a very young age. They have to be exposed to great coaches and trainers, and given all the facilities required as they mature into champions. Sports is not only about sportspersons but there is an ecosystem behind them that has to be nurtured. Our physios will have to understand the requirements, the coaches will have to upgrade their knowledge and the private entrepreneurs will have to be incentivized to invest in the ecosystem.

We need nutrition experts, trainers, physical instructors, coaches, sports medicine experts, sports psychologists and an entire eco-system to discover new and budding talents, nurture them, fine tune their skills and produce champions. We need to update our coaching standards with the latest technology and have facilities for training of the coaches. Whatever the Sports Authority of India has is primitive by modern standards and only doting parents are there to look after our young sportspersons. The current government is trying to make a difference by the ‘Khelo India’ movement and ‘Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) but we have a long way to go.

 

Corruption: Excellence in sports can be achieved by a strictly meritocratic system, where the best are given the very best facilities so that they can become even better and eventually world champions. If corruption and nepotism creeps into this at any stage, from the grassroots level to the Olympic team selection we can never achieve desired results. Favoritism needs to be weeded out for selections at various levels. The Commonwealth Games scam showed us that money that should be spent on sporting facilities, were going into the pockets of corrupt individuals.

 

Basic cost of playing: Some sports are very expensive because of the required sporting equipment. Shooting, archery, winter sports etc. all need a large investment in order to take part in. In other countries, these facilities are provided free of cost or at a very low cost to the sportspersons, but this is not so in India. Thus, these sports are only accessible to the rich, and thus a large part of the potential talent pool cannot be tapped.

 

Basic cost of training: Many sports training academies are just run as businesses. Thus the training fee tends to be high, and everybody cannot avail or afford these services. Again, only the rich end up using these facilities, and a vast talent pool cannot be reached. Mike Tyson, ,Jesse Owens, Pele, Diego Maradona, Manny Pacquaio, Usain Bolt, Victor Cruz etc. are people who have came from humble background but their respective countries supported their talent and turned them into world champions.

 

Performance: Performance of the national team matters and people tend to follow those sports where our teams perform well. Cricket did not enjoy such popularity when we are world and Olympic champions in Hockey. We also qualified for Olympics in Football once. Now as the performance and delivery declined in these sports less audience and sponsors came to the events and lesser people took to playing these sports. The World Cup victory of Kapil Dev's 1983 team changed the fortune for Cricket in India and as subsequent successes followed Cricket never looked back!  After Tokyo 2020 we can expect a resurgence of hockey and more interest in athletics and golf. 

 

Role models: Since India won the World Cup under the captaincy of Kapil Dev all our sporting role models have been cricketers – Sachin, Saurav, Dravid, Kumble, Dhoni, Virat and so on. A rare Abhinav Bindra, Pulela Gopichand, Mary Kom, P.V. Sindhu or Leander Pace could inspire thousands to take up their sports but public memory is short and their success has to be duplicated by their successors and new age role models must appear on the scene. Sports need role models for promotion and most of the Olympic sports do not have Indian heros or heroines. Neeraj Chopra, Aditi Ashok and Rani Rampal will now be the new role models and hopefully they will inspire a new crop of youngsters to take up their sport.

 

Identifying the true possibilities of a medal - Whenever we think of an Olympic medal we think of field hockey where there are only two gold medals. Till very recently we were not participating in fencing which has 12 gold medals, canoeing which has 16, cycling which has 22 and judo which has 15. Even in badminton and tennis with 5 gold medals we have an anaemic representation.

 

Malignant patriarchy - Imagine in this day and age village elders wondering how their daughters could be seen running around in shorts and being trained by male coaches! They pass diktats against the family of the budding sportspersons and discourage them to the best of their ability.  Who are we as a nation? Are we Taliban who will decide the future of our daughters?

 

Fragmented psyche - This easily is the most unfortunate thing that keeps on resurfacing from time to time. While all members of our team bond together and play together for the glory of their sports and for the pride of our country, some sections of the sick population keep dividing them along geographical, linguistic and caste lines. Athletes from the North East are worst sufferers experiencing bullying, unwanted attention, sexual harassment, abuse, stalking and discrimination. Racist slurs like Chinki, Chinese are considered OK or worse still, just a joke. Hurling casteist slurs to parents and siblings of a dalit hockey player by village hooligans back home cannot go unpunished. 

 

Genetics: An average Kenyan or Jamaican has a low BMI, so they can run for a longer periods. Running there has become a passport to fame and glory in a country full of poverty and neglect. Genetic factors underlie 30 to 80 percent of the differences among individuals in traits related to athletic performance. Skeletal muscles are made up of two types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch fibers and fast-twitch fibers. Slow-twitch muscle fibers contract slowly but can work for a long time without tiring; these fibers enable endurance activities like long-distance running. Fast-twitch muscle fibers contract quickly but tire rapidly; these fibers are good for sprinting and other activities that require power or strength. Other traits related to athleticism include the maximum amount of oxygen the body can deliver to its tissues (aerobic capacity), muscle mass, height, flexibility, coordination, intellectual ability, and personality. Many genes with diverse functions have been associated with athletic performance. Some are involved in the function of skeletal muscles, while others play roles in the production of energy for cells, communication between nerve cells, or other cellular processes. A combination of genes and environment shape the athletes.

 

It takes substantial time and effort to develop a world-class athlete. Therefore, it is not a good strategy that such players only become the star of one or two events. One of the myths in India is to focus mainly on finding talented players so that they can get more medals. However, relatively less focus has been given on developing consistent performing players. Talent and fitness are pre-requisite for performance but they alone cannot ensure desired success. Talent and fitness can give a sportsperson short-term success. He/she can become a star in one or two events. However, consistent performance is linked to mental aspect a player’s performance. Therefore an athlete, without taking care of her/his mental aspect cannot become a consistent performer. And only consistency at the highest level will create champions. We have made a good beginning but we have miles to go!