Here's what the Sports Federation ought to learn from Infosys

By Raghav N

The witch-hunt is on. Not a second seems to pass without another whistle-blower coming out into the open to talk about the doping scandal that has, at least in the eyes of the public, destroyed the reputation of Indian athletes. Now, almost every athlete is looked at with suspicion and truth of the matter is, they don’t deserve it.

Some are guilty by crime but most are guilty by assumption. And that is hardly the fate that they deserve. Before the scandal broke, the only stories that would generally appear in newspapers would be about the pitiful training conditions that these athletes had – from bad living quarters to food that would make you seem that they were on a diet. It wasn’t ideal, in fact far from it, but the general perception is that while the focus now seems to have shifted to the scandal, are the honest, hard-working athletes getting their due?

The yet-to-commence ‘cleaning’ drive of the country’s sports system can pick a lesson or two from the laundry at Infosys, Mysore. Literally.

Less than a month back, a bunch of sportspeople were led to a long hall in the sprawling Mysore campus. It was June 23, the first anniversary of Clean Sports India, and the athletes were being shown round the campus after a morning seminar. They arrived at the laundry, where the guide paused for dramatic effect. “And this,” he said, as the bunch ran their eyes over a row of washing machines, “is the biggest indoor laundry in India. It can wash 7,000kg of linen a day.”

The guide then proceeded to explain – here were the coin-operated laundromats; there the service staff who’d do it for you if you so chose. The poor, little stressed-out techies… who would’ve assumed they had any dirty laundry, considering they spent all their time in air-conditioned cubicles? They not only had state-of-the-art computers at which they were supposed to be hammering away, they also had the country’s best laundry service.

There were sighs of admiration, but also – envy? Here were some of the country’s best former athletes, including Ashwini Nachappa and Reeth Abraham, and the only ‘laundromats’ they’d had at NIS Patiala were their own hands and when you are tired, you can’t help but wonder if you’d be better off elsewhere. Ashwini chuckled.

The irony of it all wasn’t lost on her.

The guide then proceeded to show them the sports infrastructure at Infosys – badminton courts, bowling alley, a basketball court, even a synthetic athletics track. It was the equivalent of hacking into a techie geek’s system. The group stood gawking, wistfully. All this, of course, was besides the food courts (Asian and Continental), four-star accommodation, 3,000 cycles for use in the campus, and everything else one would need to pursue a goal single-mindedly.

The exercise, of having Clean Sports India’s first anniversary at Infosys, was in fact to open everybody’s eyes to what can be. If a software giant, whose interest in sport could at best be recreational, could create such a facility, what should be expected of government-run Sports Authority of India?

SAI (or should that be sigh)… the SAI campus in Kengeri, on the outskirts of Bangalore, has its advantages, but it is still stuck in the Seventies. Or perhaps even the Fifties. There is a picturesque drain cutting through the campus – all the sewage from the neighbourhood, that will join a larger drain from the city.

They tried to revamp the badminton hall – they did a good job with the ceiling and the lights, but they made a disaster of the wooden floor. They took off the boards that were in decent condition, and they replaced them with boards that look even more worn-out.

Perhaps, for the truly motivated athlete, it doesn’t matter, the eyes are set on the goal and the blinkers are on.

Gopi Chand won his All England title after shifting to SAI from the Padukone Academy a few months before the event. He did it simply by shutting out everything, all the talk about the drain and the poor flooring and inadequate lighting and practice partners. But he could do it only once, and he was the only one. Following Gopi’s example, Aparna Popat too shifted to SAI from the Padukone Academy, but there was no major jump in her performance graph.

The lesson is that the current system might still produce the odd outstanding athlete, but a system should not be designed on that premise. Seeking to build a world-class facility is not as inconceivable as it seems – one only needs to duplicate successful models in Europe or the US.

Which is what Gopi – a brief product of SAI – is attempting to do at his own academy. The players’ accommodation overlooks the training courts, which are also visible to anyone in the office. It is a strange setting, but it is effective, for no one can afford to lag at training sessions. Gopi has also made provisions for cross-training (athletics track, swimming pool) that will enable him to design various training modules. Now, SAI has contributed to Gopi’s badminton programme, but the trick is obviously in knowing how to use funds. Gopi does, SAI doesn’t.

India underestimates the scale of infrastructure required for sports. If a software company – having employees who primarily use their minds more than their bodies – can have a space that caters to every requirement, why not have centres of similar scale in sports?

So even as we run riot with the doping stories, let us not forget the real problem. Are we giving our athletes everything they need to succeed? Are the facilities, on even the most basic level, equal to what their counterparts around the world are used to? Or are we forcing them towards the toxic cocktail of doping in their desperate bid for glory?

A good infrastructure will not give our athletes a better chance but it also allow the authorities to curb the menace of doping by promoting transparency and fair play. But the fear is that we’ll probably be asking the same question 20 years from now and then we’ll only be talking about it because of some scandal and not because we want to set things right.