A pipedream turned into an Olympic reality

As a child growing up in the 1990s, I was fascinated with sports and followed India’s performance with full verve in all sports but my heart ached and I felt deeply disappointed following the performance of Indian athletes in multi-sport events like the Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, and Olympics wherein medals came in a trickle and in the Olympics medals eluded us all together.

In Asian games Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans won truckloads of medals whereas we were left ruining our chances. In fact in 1990 the first Asian Games I followed we could win only one Gold medal and that too in Kabaddi whereas even our neighbor Pakistan did better by winning four golds. In 1992 during Barcelona Olympics which I followed vividly as a child we could not win a single medal and at that time in one of the interviews an athlete when asked as to whether India can host the Olympics replied,” forget about hosting the Olympics we won’t be able to send our contingent.” We were so far behind the other countries in the 1990s that the gap seemed almost unbridgeable. Leander Paes broke the shackles and brought India’s first individual medal in the Olympics and a medal in Olympics after 16 years. This was hailed as a major achievement at the time which it surely was. Our antediluvian methods bore us no fruits and our sports federations were citadels of second-rung politicians and their children who could not get into real politics. System was rotten to the core and in deep abyss.

Circa Olympics 2020, many pundits predicted that India will win medals in double digits in Olympics. I was skeptical and thought that even five medals would be good and pinned most of my hopes on shooters and wrestlers, however, there were some pleasant surprises along the way and some heartbreaks as well during the campaign. The initial few days were very disappointing like Rio Olympics wherein our marksmen failed to find the mark, Saurabh Chaudhary and Manu Bhakar were billed as top medal contenders but simply failed to deliver at the big stage may be occasion got to them or they were simply outclassed. Defat was so ignominious that except for one event none of our shooters even made it to the final rounds. It was the same sinking feeling again as we watched their performance.

After that, there was a lot of mudslinging and washing of dirty linen in public. A spat between Manu Bhakar and Jaspal Rana came out in open and coaches were blamed for the poor performance but such a brazen display of ugly fight left everyone hurt and dejected. There was also a talk of overhauling the whole system of coaches after the poor show by shooters.

But this pain was smoothened to a certain extent by the gutsy display of Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu wrestlers Ravi Dahiya and Bajrang Poonia and to large extent by Neeraj Chopra who sashayed the thirst of every countryman for an Olympic Gold.

It was his sheer brilliance coupled with the performance of PV Sindhu, Boxer Lovlina, and a once-in-a-lifetime performance by our hockey team that brought laurels to the nation.

For me besides the Gold Medal by Neeraj Chopra, the stand-out performance was by our Hockey teams. Out Women’s hockey team fought tooth and nail to beat the Aussie. As coach Sjoerd Marijne said it was Chakde India in real and the men’s hockey team brought hockey back to the drawing-room with a superlative performance.

Leaving aside disappointments of our shooters, some of the factors which played an important role in India’s much-improved showing at the Olympics:

Tops Scheme: (Target Olympic Podium Scheme) is a flagship program of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports which is an attempt to provide assistance to India’s top athletes. The Scheme looks to add a premium to the preparations of these athletes so that they can win medals in the Olympics The Scheme currently supports 104 TOPS Core Group athletes across 13 sports disciplines & Hockey (M & W) teams and 269 TOPS Development Group athletes across 12 sports disciplines.

Interest and involvement showed by the PM: Prime Minister himself was overlooking the performance and preparation of athletes. It was his continuous efforts and monitoring which ensured that our athletes get the best of facilities and no stone was left unturned ensuring that there is no shortage of resources for our athletes. Even though our shooters did not win any medals but the facilities and exposure provided to them were world-class. Medals in double digits could have come had some of our promising athletes not floundered on the big occasion.

Interest in non-cricketing Sports: Huge interest has been seen in India in non-cricketing sports especially after 2008 Olympics when Abhinav Bindra became the first individualist Gold medalist at Bejing Olympics. After that, he has done a lot of work to uplift the Indian sports from the deep gorge that it was in. Now there are many non-cricketing sports like shooting, wrestling, Badminton, Lawn tennis, Table tennis that arouse as much passion and interest as cricket.  All this has led to the creation of sports infrastructure and entire paraphernalia around cricket.

Prize Money and Recognition:  Prize Money which accompanies an Olympic medal or for that matter medal at Asian Games or Commonwealth Games is a huge attraction for budding players to get into sports. Haryana tops the chart in terms of prize money awarded to the athletes that is also one of the prime reasons why many athletes from Haryana perform so well at international sports events.

Internet and Satellite Television: The Internet has brought in a revolution, now children from far-flung areas have access to watching high-quality sports on their mobile phones. All this has aroused the interest of children in sports who can learn all about the new techniques from Youtube.

Career Choice: Career choices are available in sports, now children can make a career in sports by doing well and parents also encourage their children to take up sports and sports is no longer a leisure activity. It can well become your career choice if you want to make it.

Moving forward and gazing thru the crystal ball, I can see Paris 2024 holds promise for us and we can surely look forward to winning more medals there. Doubling up the medal tally to 14 medals is surely possible with the right focus and putting in the right efforts our athletes can surely do better than what they have achieved so far. If Tokyo was the start of a sporting revolution, winning medals in double digits a distant dream can surely be achieved with the right focus and brilliance.

If not a sporting powerhouse we can at least move a notch above from a nation of underachievers to a Nation winning medals. It’s a sleeping giant of a nation let us make it a sporting powerhouse in 2028.  Paris here we come!!

Hope in Paris our romance for medals reach a crescendo with our sportsman coming back with bagful of medals for sports lovers.

Let this romance continue unabated.