Management Perspectives

I ndia’s contingent—117 athletes and 118 support staff—to Paris 2024 Olympics has come back with a haul little lower than what we had bagged at Tokyo and drastically below our expectations of ‘at least double digits’. There were moments of joy and glory when Manu Bhaker was awarded two bronzes on successive days and many heartbreaks like the same brilliant girl getting fourth place in another event (actually her favourite) or weightlifter Mira Bai Chanu ending up at the same unfortunate spot or our fancied shuttler Lakshya Sen’s near miss in the singles; also fourth places in mixed team archery, mixed team skeet, and men’s 10 m air rifle. I can’t forget Manu’s response when a reporter asked her, “Despite having won two medals, why do you look so crestfallen?” Poor girl, in tears, responded with a forced half smile “because fourth place is never good.”

The biggest disappointment was, of course, the exceptionally brave wrestler Vinesh Phogat getting disqualified for being 100 grams over the 50-kg class she was competing in. Then, there was the ecstasy of beating England in men’s hockey and agony when the same wonderful team lost to Germany. Our men later got their due by winning the bronze against Spain—a precious back-to-back bronze after Tokyo.

It was also disappointing to see our valiant Neeraj Chopra surrendering the gold to his Pakistani rival Nadeem who threw a literal monster full 3-1/2 meters ahead of our man’s best. Throughout the two weeks of the competition, in addition to the excruciating hard work and training of the competitors and the help of their support staff, there were also the prayers of 1.4 billion Indians but life and sports competition can be cruel. All of us want our teams to bring home more medals from international events and we actually did well at the Commonwealth and Asian Games.

Our desires are big, and why not? Everyone desires infinitely more than what we end up getting but there is a huge difference between desires and ground realities and we must do an honest, objective, and dispassionate introspection of our strengths and weaknesses. And all this must be done before we start preparing for the next big event. Before I come to that, a I have a few words to share about the unfair, unwanted, and cruel criticism of our boys and girls who fail.

We love, adore and hero-worship our Olympians, we celebrate their victories, but when one of them fails to make the grade, without giving even a moment’s thought, we switch to cruel criticism that does huge damage; it demoralises them and makes them feel guilty. I have heard people making snide remarks like “Six medals aur population 140 crores.” Some troll the players on social media, somes start finding faults in the system of selections, while some become experts without knowing anything about the game. Imagine what it does to players’ psyche.

Our politicians are, of course, in another league. Sticking to their ‘opposition dharma’ they shout “conspiracy” when Phogat gets disqualified! Pray, conspiracy by whom? Are the referees and judges hatching a conspiracy against our players? They demand ‘thorough investigation’ into technical reasons behind the disqualification and add that “the truth must come to the fore.”

All this happened in the backdrop of the gutsy girl going through a lot in her personal and professional lives. Before I move to ‘what needs to be done’ let me also mention here that in the midst of all this gloom and despondency, we must not forget a silver lining. Six medals is definitely sub-par but let us also recall that after Norman Pritchard (his Indian nationality is still disputed as our rulers claimed that he was British) won two medals at Paris in 1900, it took Dhyan Chand’s boys 28 years to clinch the hockey gold in Amsterdam— and the Indian hockey team kept winning in LA (1932), Berlin (1936), London (1948), Helsinki (1952), and Melbourne (1956) but it was only in 1952 at Helsinki that wrestler KD Jadhav won India’s first individual medal! After another long drought, it was in 1996 that Leander Peas broke the jinx at Atlanta, by winning a bronze in tennis—the first Asian in Olympic history to win a tennis medal and the only Indian till date.

We moved from three medals in 2008 to six in 2012, two in 2016, and the crowning glory of seven in 2020 at Tokyo. Fourth places are agonisingly painful, but also show a flicker of hope that we can improve in 2028. Of course, we have to thoroughly overhaul our systems and approach and work very hard for the same.

What needs to be done

Let me begin with our sports federations and who runs them. Except in case of athletics, no president is a sports person! The hockey president is both a sportsman and a politician, which is great. Even in the case of Sr. VPs/Honorary Secretaries, no one is a sports person except for athletics and table tennis. In the third rung—VPs— only six out of the 60 odd office bearers are sports persons.

These federations are responsible for preparing and sending our teams to the Olympics! If only we could fill up all federations with acclaimed sport spersons as heads and even three– or four lower rungs, give them autonomy, make sure that there is no political interference, government allocates sufficient funds, training is scientific and meticulous, get them adequate international exposure, ensure objective and transparent selection process, then we can see rapid progress.

Let’s now look at our training platforms. A recent IE report came with the startling findings that the National Collegiate Athletics Association of USA, which administers the inter collegiate athletics, is the real topper in the Paris medals tally. NCAA schools sent more than 1000 former and current athletes, who represented 100 different countries to the Paris Olympics.

Between 272 of them, they won a mind boggling 330 medals for 26 countries—more than the combined haul of USA (126), China (91), Japan (45) and Australia (53). Which school, college, or university in India can claim anything in this area? Colleges and schools have to be our nurseries for nurturing talent! Chhatrasal Akhada in North Delhi has proven to be the ‘real nursery of our Olympic winners in wrestling’.

Out of our cumulative eight Olympic medals six have come from Chhatrasal. Why don’t we replicate a thousand such akhadas all over the country?  We can’t start with a small base of, say, five or ten thousand athletes at our few academies (SAI-2, Regional Centers -11, Centers of Excellence -14, Training Centers - 56 and Special Area Games -20); grand total 103) and hope to win a large number of medals at any international meet.

China, for example, has an estimated 300 million playing table tennis—out of them about 10 million at a competitive level. Reportedly, they have one table tennis table for every seven people. That is how the Chinese dominate the game. In football, I understand, most European and South American countries have 100s of professional clubs in major cities.

They also have semi-professional and amateur clubs. Similarly, badminton and swimming are practised religiously in China, USA, Australia, and Great Britain. Same is the story of South Korea for weightlifting and Iran for wrestling. To succeed in a big way, in any discipline, it has to become a culture in the country—like chess has become in India and we have found glory internationally over decades.

There is also a culture of ‘giving back to society’ by top sports persons and athletes which is, sadly, not as common in our case as one would like to see. There are a few athletes and sports persons who have contributed to their sports in different ways after retirement and there are also those who have been running coaching academies; but the number of such people is limited. They are all famous, loved by fans, honoured by the government, admired by the companies who engage them for endorsements, but I wish many more were actively involved in helping and coaching juniors aspiring to excel in their sport.

Surprising media apathy

Even though media reporting of the twoweek-long Olympics was admirable, curiously an important event at Paris, on August 11, went virtually unreported! On this day, at a special session of the International Olympics committee, our 2008 shooting gold medalist—the first Indian to win an individual medal (Beijing 2008) Abhinav Bindra was awarded the ‘Olympic Order’ for his exceptional services to the Olympics mission and propagating Olympic Values.

Unknown to most of us, this media-shy, quiet gentleman has been involved with a ‘values education’ program that will benefit 15 million children in Assam and Odisha and also a sustainability project to plant one million trees in Odisha. We have a long way to go—from six medals at Paris to, hopefully, 15 at LA, and in geometric progression thereafter—but we will need to do a lot of cleaning up and hard work.