Will Bindra’s blunt truths wake up Indian sports?
Thu, September 11 2008
These words, coming from a champion, sound punchy. But such sound bites have sparked animated debates every time our athletes have failed in international arenas like the Olympics or Asian Games. The usual refrain is: What do they know about sport? Throw them out.
The hockey administration faced severe criticism when India failed to win a medal in the 2006 Doha Asian Games and again after the failure in the Santiago qualifier. There was even a protest march on the streets of the capital by former greats of the game after the Doha disaster.
But since the criticism is now coming from India’s one and only individual athlete to win an Olympic gold medal, people are taking note. He has admonished the system, or lack of it, after the country’s best ever Olympic venture – two boxing bronze medals in addition to Bindra’s gold.
Three medals should hardly be satisfying for a nation with over a billion people. Bindra thinks India has the talent to raise itself to a more respectable position in the Olympic medal standings. It could win 30 to 40 medals in times to come if sports administration goes professional, or well paid CEOs, as they are called these days, are involved with our sports bodies. These men will be more accountable, he argues with conviction.
He may well be right. At Beijing, we had a handful of quarter-finalists who did credit to themselves and their country even if they didn’t come back with medals.
You can’t help but agree with the champion air rifle shooter in scholarly looking glasses when he reminds his fellow countrymen that Olympic sports come low down in the country’s list of priorities. The young man from Chandigarh has a mind of his own.
For the number of medals to get into double digits there has to be a consistent and widespread commitment to Olympic disciplines.
Olympic medals don’t come cheap. The raising of a single Olympic gold medalist would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars by conservative estimates. Ask the Chinese. Ask Bindra himself.
He cries for infrastructure and massive investments, for coaches with the right kind of knowledge. His own sport of shooting lacks modern ranges. The one at Tughlaqabad in New Delhi is in a poor state of repair.
Where, also, are the facilities like proper boxing rings and wrestling mats, all weather swimming pools and gymnasiums, athletic tracks and cycling velodromes, for youths to train and compete, or even a sufficient number of playing grounds? Those who have the talent find affording the equipment beyond their slender means.
However, you can’t paint everyone with the same brush when Bindra questions the role of some people who muscle their way into positions of authority in sports federations. Politicians and other influential persons capture power in sports federations to increase their sphere of influence. It was a shooter who won India’s first ever individual gold medal, but the shooting federation is headed by one who has no achievements in the sport to his credit. Ditto for the boxing and the wrestling federations. Whosoever may head the sports bodies, in the end it is left to the sportsmen to perform, after all.
Not every champion performer is qualified to lead a sports body, though Bindra himself may be a suitable candidate for the helm of the shooting body many years from now when he retires from competitive shooting. He may even deserve some higher, international role in the future, just as you have Seb Coe, the distinguished former British 800 metres world record holder, heading the 2012 London Olympic Games organizing committee. You may have a Platini forging his way up in the French soccer administration, or a Beckenbauer organizing the World Cup for Germany.
But if, after the gold medal euphoria wears off, Bindra’s bluntly stated truths can help shake up our slow-moving sports bureaucracy and get it to kick its red tape approach, inject more dynamism into the working of the sports ministry, bring more professionalism into the management of sports and involve corporate houses in a bigger way in encouraging Olympic sports disciplines, he would have done a world of good to Indian sport.
(K. Datta is a veteran sports journalist)
-IANS
By K. Datta
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