Olympic Soup
The story of India’s mess at Olympics
I wanted to write on this topic earlier, but given the fact that we have such short memories, I felt it best to wait for a week when the anger has died down and we had gone back to our usual life, caring only about cricket.
Recently Piers Morgan had this to say about India at the Olympics
Now it is easy to mass troll him, hate him and call him names, Virender Sehwag aced at it. The fact remains that India showed the most poor performance possible and no amount of trolling can change that fact. The world does have a right to question us as to where we lacked.
FUN FACT: North Korea outperformed us with 2 golds, 3 silver and 2 bronze. We are literally worse in sports than the worst country imaginable. No wonder the world press had a field day trolling us with headlines like, “per-capita India has the worst athletes on earth.”
Here’s a simple dissection of what we did wrong and why we didn’t really stood a chance.
- Cricket, cricket, cricket
The sport that is no less than a religion for us has a huge factor at how we look at the games . Most of us know each and every cricket player, how every shot should be taken. Fans have dedicated their lives to it. But here’s the thing, the world doesn’t give a shit about cricket. It is a game played by only 10 countries and going by how ICC is doing, it’s going to stay that way. Frankly we ruined India’s chance at any other sport when the team won the cup in 1983 and we haven’t stopped since. India has the best cricket academy, coaching and stadiums and has been host for numerous games including world cups, our cricketers are worshipped like gods, they get the juiciest deals which is more than what I can say for any other sport.
2. Ignorance
The Vault finalist Dipa Karmakar whom India is so proud of had heard her sport being ridiculed by someone comparing it with a circus act. Same was the case with Sandeep Kumar, the speed walker who was laughed and ridiculed on the roads because of the pose he had to be while competing. Then there are those who sports which we don’t even know exist. Many of our athletes spend their entire life in obscurity.
3. Lack of Facilities and Govt. Apathy
It is no surprise. This has been widely covered by our media and ridiculed the world over. A sports minister who’s crazy for selfie. A Haryana minister spending Rs. 1 crore on travelling, and an entourage travelling business class and holidaying on the beaches and partying instead of tending to our players. To further the problem, most of our players who hail from a poor economic background and don’t have enough resources on their own have to rely on whatever the government provides them. Everytime it is too little too late.
Most of the sporting bodies is overrun by moronic politicians who are screwing up whatever the government gives out to sports for personal gains, how else can you explain a radiologist who happens to be the son of IOA member to end up in Rio as the team doctor.
4. Lack of Support
This is one of the lesser talked about but important issue. Most of the people think that there is no other career other than Doctor, engineer or government job. A person talented in sports hardly gets the support he needs to go ahead. Those who do, won’t get any support until they achieve the ultimate success of a gold medal.
5. Failure to learn
We have always used the damage control method, instead of planning ahead. Every single time after a debacle we go in damage control and hope for the best. No planning ahead and no planning at all is what’s holding us back. The mess between Narsingh Yadav and Sushil Kumar is living proof of that.
6. Lack of Funding
The government budget was only 50 crore for sports, as compared to this UK spent nearly 5.5 million pounds spent per medal. We can’t blame our government on this one. Cash strapped as it is, the money is needed for developing our infrastructure and other developments. Maybe we can ask our representatives to apply a few austerity measures and direct the savings to our athletes.
Whatever the reasons, it’s high time to introspect and decide what we have to do. Olympics are the pinnacle of sports and the chance for countries to show their strength in other ways than war and its high time India lives up to its high and mighty reputation here as we do elsewhere.
#TVI
