Let’s stop pining for Olympic glory
Sports matter for a country. Medals don’t.
After a postponement and much last minute anxiety, the Tokyo Olympics began last week. Thanks to Mirabai Chanu, India got off to a flying start and was momentarily second on the medals tally — a screenshot that is saved by many a netizen.
Ever since, it has been an all-too-familiar story of “c’mon, yeah, yes… oh damn” in nearly every sport for India. Equipment malfunctions, coach politics, lack of support from the system — there is Bollywood masala behind every Indian sporting disappointment.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to take away from how far we have progressed in the past two decades. When Paes and Malleswari won bronze in ’96 and 2000, medals were surprises, and not expectations. That has changed.
But as a contingent, we are down in the dumps still. Even with a couple of more medals, it will be remarkable if we finish in the top 50.
So, time for a question. Should we care?
And my short answer. We shouldn’t. Let’s see why.
Medals don’t drive value to a nation as a whole
A nation’s medal tally has had no impact on its geo-political importance. Croatia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey are all much ahead of India in the tally right now. Don’t believe that makes us compare ourselves unfavourably to them.
For many athletes, especially in a medal starved nation, Olympic glory is an end in itself and not a means. And even so, what it propels is the athlete’s own career or brand image. It routes some sponsor money to them, but overall does not add new value to the country at large.
So why are the top nations pumping money to generate medal winners? Firstly, they have that spare money. Secondly, for them, sports make up for a proxy war. China, Japan, USA, Russia — these countries have been in a phallic competition for decades — they fought actual wars, space wars, tech wars and every four years, they fight a sporting war.
It’s actually a lot of money investment!
I won’t fritter away my own words — here’s someone putting it way more thoroughly than I could — ‘Britain spends £4.5 million per medal’. Being in the global top 3 in a game is really, really tough.
Crossing the chasm between the great and the top 3 requires a cocktail of immense talent, outrageous luck and mind-boggling access to resources. It becomes a lot about the individual and comes with diminishing returns to the larger condition of the sport in the country.
So, if an individual can fend for their training, let them go for gold and achieve personal glory. I like non-Olympic tennis for that reason. You play for yourself, for as short or as long as you can afford to.
So, we shouldn’t invest in sports?
Of course, we should. Sports is but a gamification of fitness. So, I would rather spend the bucks for community gyms, better food in government schools, basic sporting infra in all schools so that there is a culture of physical fitness across the nation.
Ensuring 90% of the country can actually run 5km in one go is a bigger win than 2 people being able to run 100m in under 10s, while your larger populace is battling obesity on one end and malnourishment on the other.
A focus on fitness would also incentivise investment into the right sports. The sport selection in Olympics is rather bizarre — not even correlated to global audience interest. Perhaps a legacy western bias. What else would explain fencing, beach volleyball & surfing (Summer) and my favorite Curling in the Winter edition.
Is this what the Government is also thinking?
While writing this article, I did some googling. And the below chart caught my eye. Incidentally, the Government has also been pumping lesser money to the Sporting federations and putting an inordinate amount on ‘Khelo India’ promoting sports and fitness initiatives at the grassroots level.
The problem, however, is that if we are still worrying over the lack of medals, our metrics are horribly misaligned to the inputs.
So, let’s root for our men and women out there in Tokyo vying for a place in the sun. But stop drumming up issues of national pride or disappointment.
You don’t need to be a Virat Kohli to wield a bat. And not every run needs to be timed.
And then maybe, who knows, with the burden of a billion dreams lifted, lifting to win gold might also be possible.
