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OLYMPIC
SPECIAL
Chocolates
Don't Make Champions
In
India, he will testify, there is a serious disinclination to building
a mass-based sporting culture, as opposed to the ongoing less-trial-more-error
focus on elite athletes. The weak base he speaks of is responsible in
very great measure for our record at the Olympics and will continue to
be so. Before the talent-spotting, the training, the diet, the squabbling
between coaches, the inefficiency and politicking in our sporting bodies
can begin, a disdain for sport has already whittled away numbers-and ambition.
Bahadur
Singh, the coach of the Indian athletics team to Sydney says, "Our
culture is this-we send two year olds to school but how many of those
children even see a gym? We have no shortage of population, only a very
dire shortage of participation." Dr M.D. Ranga, sports scientist
at the Sports Authority of India Centre, Bangalore, believes India has
not taken to sports in the truest sense. "Principals treat pe teachers
as though their only role is to act as substitutes for absent staff. We
don't encourage children to take up sports in a serious way. If we want
to make champions, we have to come out of this 'chocolate culture'."
Indians-particularly
those with access to good sports facilities in the cosy enclaves of clubs-are
foremost in demanding Olympic medals. But they would rather someone else's
child train, sweat and struggle. Bahadur Singh says, "Most of our
athletes come from the villages. It is very rare to have someone from
the big cities or from well-off families who have the money and the access
to good facilities." Then again, very few Indian families give up
their child to sport willingly because the community hardly understands.
Roadside wags will always hoot at the weightlifter on her way to the gym,
the clerk will still worry because his son wants to play hockey.
Abhinav
Bindra now knows how deep such attitudes run: the 17-year-old son of a
family wealthy enough to have built an air-conditioned shooting range
at home, Bindra can nail target as wide as a fullstop on this page. He
shoots a world junior record score in Munich, is awarded an International
Olympic Committee youth scholarship but cannot get into St Stephen's College,
Delhi, on the sports quota. Not because he's dumb, but because he's late
for the college's own shooting trials. When the trials are on, Bindra
is in the Czech Republic trying to earn a quota card to Sydney. He wins
bronze in Pilsen, but misses the Stephen's trials and is refused admission.
His father is told "anyone can show us certificates".
On the other
hand, Kansas State University's athletic talent scout begs Indian middle-distance
runner Sunita Rani to join his college, all expenses paid. He even promises
to wrangle admission for a member of Sunita's family in an adult education
course so that she can have company in the US. Asian Games medallist and
India's best athlete since P.T. Usha, Sunita asks them to wait because
she would like to run for India at the Olympic Games.
Which Indian
would exchange financial and professional jackpot for a shot at that unreliable
thing called glory? Only soldiers can make sense of the idealism which
keeps Indian sport going. Coupled with individual drive, it is what has
brought India its champions, who remain accidents of nature, not the result
of a greater plan.
In
any case, what is a sporting culture? It is not about wealth, but a mindset.
Ramesh Krishnan learnt about it in the US in the 1980s when on a morning
jog he found himself unable to keep up with pensioners in a park. Trapshooter
Anwar Sultan, who will compete in Sydney, found out in Italy. He got off
a taxi at a shooting range and was joined by the cab driver for a spot
of practice. Cuba, with 11 million, has a culture for sport, its villages
and towns dotted with rundown boxing clubs, top-class sparring partners
waiting for a bout. An Indian coach watched a 1500m in Ukraine, which
had four heats, 65 runners to a heat-at a district-level championship.
"Here we cannot get 60 runners in any single event at a national
meet," he laughs. National boxing coach G.S. Sandhu says, "You
have to select thousands and only then can you create maybe two world-beaters.
If you have five you cannot hope to find world-class athletes." A
sporting culture involves making sport part of a child's upbringing, treating
it on a par with the three Rs and good manners, embracing sport for its
own sake, not only for Olympic medals.
In keeping
with the skewed traditions of Indian sport, astonishingly there is something
to look forward in Sydney next month: the progress of Bhupathi-Paes, the
hockey team, the women lifters. But as you watch, remember Alice Walker
because India is not a great sporting nation yet. A hundred years of Olympics
and missing medals by fractions teach many hard lessons but also a very
simple one. At the heart of a great sporting nation lies access to sport
for all and a fundamental respect for sporting achievement.
An ad for
the US Olympic team asks the question, "Do athletes enter the stadium
on their own two feet or are they carried there on the shoulders of their
families and friends?" The Indian Olympic squad must wonder whether
those shoulders are strong enough.
Maybe our
athletes don't fail us. Maybe we fail our athletes.
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