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SPORTS:
OLYMPICS SPECIAL
Too
Many Officials and too Low a Standard
It's
not just too many officials, but barring an efficient Sandeep Mehta (public
relations officer) and energetic Ashok Mattoo (chef de mission), it's
mostly the wrong ones. To see the Australian Olympic team, for instance,
is to be invited to an exhibition of thoroughness. Forget the athletes,
look at some of their support staff: 22 doctors, 24 massage therapists,
33 physiotherapists, 12 psychologists. Guaranteed they have 630 athletes
and India 71, but the ratio is still lopsided when you consider India
didn't bring a single psychologist, only one masseur (for the athletics
team), one physiotherapist and, yes, five doctors. One day when this reporter
asked judoka Brojeshwari Devi if her sport was painful, she laughed gaily
and replied, "I'm being thrown all over the place." Then she
has to line up to be worked on by a masseur provided by the organisers.
The suspicion
lingers that Sydney's unique generosity in paying every athlete and official's
air fare and accommodation costs has resulted in inflated contingents.
After all, India brought athletes who are better suited to watching the
Olympics at home on television. In any field event to throw a few inches
below one's personal best is disappointing; when it is in metres it's
merely comic. Shot-putter Shakti Singh has thrown 20 m plus in India,
18.40 m here; javelin thrower Jagdish Bishnoi throws 79 m plus in India,
70.86 m here; discus thrower Neelam Singh has a 63 m plus in India, 55.26
m here. Now then, was it the lack of chapatis, a vicious headwind or a
heavier shot? Disgrace overshadows any argument that they had qualified
to get here.
But ineptitude
by the majority cannot mask what has been, oddly enough, for India a rather
triumphant Games. Vedpathak, despite training at a decrepit range in Worli
without electronic targets, became the first Indian to reach any final
since P.T. Usha in 1984, eighth among 49 competitors, a worthy result.
The 400 m runner K.M. Beenamol, whose spindly legs make her seem malnourished
in front of women like Cathy Freeman who are thick with muscle, won her
heat with such style that worried international reporters thought with
Marie-Jose Perec's departure Freeman faced a fresh threat. And Gurcharan
Singh slugged his way to becoming the first Indian boxer to reach an
Olympics
quarter-finals.
In one sense,
to just flirt with medals in the Indian context is a significant achievement,
absolute proof that potential exists, but that we're too lazy or ignorant
of how to shape it. Hussain told India Today, "In Australia there
is accountability, but not in India. But I'm going to fix responsibility
on everyone, ask federations to tell us what they had done in the past
10 years." A politician's rhetoric, alas, is no balm.
In another
sense, we were not good enough. Swimmer Shane Gould said when the Games
began, "It's not about being the best in the world, it's about being
the best in the world on the day." Maybe we recognised the moment,
but we could not seize it. For the fatalistic Indian though, kismet explains
every missed medal, as if this traditional cliché will erase his
disappointment, excuse his team's failure.
But maybe
there is something to this kismet business. After all, when India arrived
in Sydney we believed we already owned four individual Olympic medals
(two for Norman Pritchard, one each for K. Jadhav and Leander Paes); yet
having won one, our total inexplicably remains at three. Research shows
that the two medals won by Pritchard in 1900 and attributed to India actually
belong to Great Britain's medal tally list.
Only in
India, could we win but still lose.
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In
India, youth is marked by impetuosity and prevented from getting ahead.
Elsewhere, of course, the young rule the world, says INDIA TODAY Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 
