#365DaysOfWriting – Day Ninety-Eight
2 days to the big 100 for me. But no medal for India, yet.
It hurts to say this, but it has to be said.
Yes, in a country like ours, being an Olympian is probably a thankless task – there’s virtually little-to-no government help, people in this country have virtually zero interest in sports (“yes of course you can play but first finish your studies”), and there’s no guarantee of a livelihood even after you’ve won a medal. Maybe that’s why we’ve struggled to win medals at most Olympics. 2008 and 2012 were decent years, and I’d begun to think we were improving – but 2016 has been disastrous so far. And it started much before the games, with the ugly spat between the wrestlers taking up much of the media spotlight.
But are our athletes worse off than North Korea’s?
They’ve scored 5 medals already, one of which is gold in weightlifting. They’ve even qualified for a FIFA World Cup. Let’s see the overall medal tally at the Olympics over the years:
- North Korea’s first Olympics was in 1964. Since then, they’ve won 49 medals in the Summer Olympics, 2 in the Winter Olympics. A total of 51.
- India’s first Olympics was in 1900. Since then, we’ve won 26 medals, all of them in the Summer Olympics.
North Korea is generally in the news for all the wrong reasons – their ‘democratically elected’ government is a joke, their media feeds them with false news of the world, their laws and regulations make Saudi Arabia look like paradise, and it is one of the most travel-unfriendly countries in the world. Yet their athletes have scored almost double the medals we have in less than half the time.
Maybe there are a million factors, but I still want to ask – why?
I know the kind of hardships our athletes go through. I know how hard they work. Don’t North Korean athletes have to work doubly harder? Aren’t we supposed to be better off than North Korea as a nation? Or has our apathy towards sport (apart from cricket) reached a stage where we have to put in 10x the effort put by even a North Korean athlete? What is it that North Korean athletes do that ours don’t?
I don’t know the answer to these questions. I hope someone answers them for me. Meanwhile, I look forward to Dipa Karmakar’s vault finals today. Maybe she will end the drought and bring some relief. Whatever happens, I will always root for her though.
