Only some sports matter

2021 aside, it doesn’t take much to figure out why a nation as big as ours fares so badly at the Olympics

If it weren’t for India’s women, we would have to consider giving up on the Olympics. I say this in all seriousness, going by the hoops our sportspeople have to jump through in order to come close to any medal at all. That they do this repeatedly every four years is testament to their dedication and skill alone. It is not the presence of any sports ministry, no matter how many advertisements that ministry will pay for to claim a spotlight for itself and the clown who happens to be heading its portfolio.

Everyone knows what people who play anything other than cricket can expect in our country. If they’re lucky, they get a few brands to endorse for a year or two before fading into obscurity. If they’re very lucky, they raise enough funds to start training schools of their own, guaranteeing themselves a chance of survival long after the roar of a stadium crowd has faded. A majority of them will inadvertently fall through the cracks, left with a few newspaper cuttings and faded photographs with chief ministers of their respective states, wondering why they had hopes for anything better.

As a teenager, I had the opportunity to look at how sportspeople function, when I spent a few years training as an athlete. There were genuinely talented people around me at the time, some of whom could undoubtedly have brought glory to their country if that country had cared enough. Instead, when I think about those young men and women today, I struggle to recall their names. Many abandoned sports the minute they reached college, opting for careers as bankers and engineers instead. Some left our shores, presumably in the hope that they could play sports for a living. What those years left me with was a deep and abiding respect for what professional sportspeople put up with when they make it to global events like the Olympics. Some of them manage to raise funds from corporate sponsors, but many others make do with what they have, which, when compared to most other countries, is very little.

India is home to a billion people, which is why our performance at these events should matter. We should wonder why we barely scratch the surface with those rankings, coming home year after year with very little to show. We should ask ourselves what happens to the children playing all kinds of sports in school, attending camps, working with private coaches. Where do they disappear as adults? We should also ask ourselves why our ministers show up after a medal has been won, rarely turning up to encourage our sportspeople before. Why are their photographs on congratulatory banners and full-page advertisements? What have they done to deserve that kind of coverage?

What we all need to acknowledge is that India fares poorly at the Olympics not because we don’t have citizens good enough to come home with gold medals, but because we don’t care enough to do what it takes to support them. Our energy, attention, and money are so overwhelmingly skewed towards the game of cricket that we have long ceased to notice that there are other sporting activities also worth being excited about. The official 2021 Olympics programme listed 33 sports, 46 disciplines, and 339 medal events. We can gauge our interest by trying to list these events and ticking off how many we took time out to watch the way we do during a test match.

Unfortunately, there are no medals given out for uncouth behaviour, misogyny, racism, or bigotry. If there were, we would have broken records with ease. The Olympics reward hard work, devotion, and the pursuit of excellence, all traits that are sorely missing in almost everything we turn our eyes to. It’s why we can’t seem to get anything right, and why our sportspeople are smothered by the same apathy and bureaucracy that blights every aspect of all our lives. Our performance at the Olympics is merely another symptom of the malady that is being born Indian.

Having said that, there is still hope that things may change. Maybe a future government that is interested in more than just public relations may realise that Indian sportspeople can do magical things with a little help and the right kind of support. Who knows, we may even wake up to advertisements with photographs of those medal-winning men and women someday, instead of politicians smiling inanely, taking credit for what they have never had a hand in.

When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira

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