Lalaji nation’s quest for gold: Our dismal sport story

We hate sport and the outdoors. We prevent kids from going out in the sun, rain, wind, hurricanes, summer and winter. We pull out promising and talented athletic children from the maidans and sent them to  tuition sweat shops in Kota so that they can get the IAS and join the IIT.

“Sit for the IAS” is our favourite maxim. “ Training for the National championship,” we never hear any parent say.  We  love only the written exam. We hate the running exam, the hurdling exam, the goal-scoring exam. We avoid all that. But we love gold even if it comes in the shapes of Olympic medals , but if that is not there we buy gold in kilos and hang it around the necks of our daughters. As long as there is gold around our necks it’s fine.

But we  sent out a collective quadrennial wail when the Olympic gold is won by almost every other country but not us. The question we ask ourselves now is  can we become an Olympic medal winning nation? Will a collective effort make us a sporting nation?  Or is the silver medal the limit of our achievement?  The odds are stacked against us for the following reasons:

We are not blessed genetically or racially to be a sporting race. It is the same with other South Asian races and countries as well.  This is in direct contrast to physically superior small nations like say Jamaica (pop 3 million) which has over 10 athletes who can run the 100 metres at 10 or below.  Our fastest is 10.24 seconds.  Apart from Kabaddi we have not invented any sport and we cannot play what the Europeans or Japs have invented. Most Athletic events are Greek or European inventions.

It is because of this that we are not naturally inclined to the athletic activity. We have an inclination for games of skill (played with an apparatus like bat sticks. Pistols and guns, etc). To run the marathon is not our intention or will. Ram Yadav our marathoner finished 58th in his worst performance ever. Many of our team members turned out performances below their best while most of the well trained and keyed up athletes perform above their best in the big event.

But we must soldier one and some things can be tried out. Government and bureaucracy has not  the will or ideas or projects to whip up a sporting frenzy. Private initiatives  like Geet Sethi’s admirable Gold quest are too small though a good model.

For anything big to happen in a country there has to be political will. What can you expect from a country where Mamata Banerjee and Uma Bharti have been sports ministers in the past?  Ajay Maken has shown the right moves but has to show more passion,  drive and a plan.

The quick steps are as follows:

Disband the utterly bureaucratic and somnolent SAI. Make all government stadiums free of SAI babus. All that SAI does is take charge of  all government stadiums and put a guard  at the entrance to prevent anyone from entering.  Maken has changed that and has now opened stadia for youngsters but that system needs to be more popular. A badminton coach at the new Indira Gandhi stadium told me that about 500 kids come there during season. That is a good sign.

Replace SAI with a structure of Sports commissioner at the top (Vijay Amritraj?), below the sports minister. Apart from cricket all sports should be brought under the SC who will have directors for each sport under him. The directors will deal with federations all of whom do not have any infrastructure of their own and survive on government largess.

Each big stadium should be a sports hub with one former sportsman in charge and open access to  sportsmen. After all these years JN stadium in Delhi has not produced a single athlete of national repute. . Reason is that no one bar a few are allowed to enter the stadium. They why did we build it?

All potential Olympians should have a manager who will handle all off court business including foreign meets, diet, and commercials.  So each top sportsman will have a coach and a manager for long periods say two years before the Olympics. So we won’t have Usha making a plea for  an agent for Tintu Luka in London. Apart from cricketers no other sportsman has an agent. Our athletes live in an utterly cloistered world. And when it comes to going for an international event a ‘file’ is created and a SAI babu sits on it till the event is over.

This is how sports in India is run. Compare this to how hosts Great Britain won . In Barcelona in 1992 Britain got five gold medals. This time it was third (hosts always get more medals that they have ever got)  and got 18 more medals that 2008.  They had 29 golds and a total of 65 medals.

The man responsible for GB sport preparation  was Peter Keen , former cyclist , Special adviser to UK Sport. A post like that of the SC I suggested above. He was the man who planned out in detail each sport and its preparations. Britain spend 500 million pounds over the last four years to end up with 65 medals and number three in terms of gold. See what Keen has to say: “ A lot of it is engineering , putting in processes, ways of doing things and the principles that drive it. It’s about trying to win and its something that I’ve learnt to do quite well,”

Is there anyone in SAI who can say such a thing? What planning has SAI ever done? IAS officers who come to SAI are mostly careerists who see this as cooling off period before they go to North Block. He is hardly going to dirty his pants talking to athletic and drawing up programmes.

In a well managed system one man is put in charge of big jobs. Like Keen who built the team over four year, Seb Coe delivered the perfect Olympics as the  man in charge as Director.  After the Olympics Seb Coe in a vision statement said emphasizing the need for sport in schools: “Sport will teach them to win. It will teach them to lose with dignity  and magnanimity . It is a pretty good metaphor for life.” We crib about our bad performances but has any minister made any such statement in India?

We appoint committees, basically as a smokescreen to prevent being blamed  when things go wrong. Today again another huge committee has been formed to select Arjuna award winners. Why can’t the sports minister do it and take responsibility for his selections?

We ended up last in hockey, a once favourite game of ours. In the Olympic qualifiers in New Delhi the stadium was full.  The Punjabi and Sardarji’s interest in the game was rekindled as we thrashed France to quality. They danced the Bhangra. So did I.

We make good hockey sticks. The stick sells well . Most of it is  not used to play hockey. It is used as a walking prop by people with broken legs, bought in dozens by thugs to store for a violent day, since it cannot be termed a dangerous weapon. Jyoti Punwani in Open magazine  reports that Mumbai Moral Brigade chief ACP Vasant Dhoble,  started his career as  a street cop carrying a hockey stick with which he beat people. He was convicted in a case in which he beat a man to death with a hockey stick.  Dhoble never once saw in the hockey stick a weapon to achieve glory.  For him and for many Indians it is for drawing blood.

Over the years India found many uses for the hockey stick. We make them, we buy them we use them. On the fast flexi turf our hockey sticks  are sticking ducks. We have forgotten how to play.