India’s Tokyo Performance: Happy With Mediocrity?

Australia has a population of 2.54 crore, but prides itself of a huge sporting culture. In the just-concluded Olympic Games in Tokyo, athletes from Down Under took home 46 medals, 17 of them gold and 7 silver. 

Think of New Zealand, separated from Australia by the Tasman Sea. It has just over 49 lakh people, a population much less than many large Indian cities. But its Olympic contingent harvested 7 gold, 6 silver and 7 bronze medals at Tokyo this time.

Now compare that with India, a nation with more than 136 crore people. We sent our biggest ever contingent to the Olympics this time and returned with 1 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze medals which, hold your breath, is being hailed as our greatest ever performance in the quadrennial event.

Why is it so that our athletes are outplayed by those from tiny countries? The physique and stamina of our young people is definitely a notch below other competitors and provides the answer to some extent. Our genes and requirements are also different. But does it mean that we can’t improve?

Since 1928, the Olympic Games meant just another hockey tournament for India as the only expectation of a medal was from the hockey team, which boasted of some of the world’s brilliant exponents of the game. The hockey squad won at least one medal of any hue till the 1972 Olympics held at Munich. But Australia and the European countries like Netherlands and Germany pushed us off the pedestal in the 1976 Montreal games. The narrative remained the same till Tokyo though India managed to win the gold at Moscow in 1980 in a truncated Olympics with the big guns staying away.

This time the Indian contingent reached Japan with high hopes of doing much better. In fact, they have done better than our best performance at the 2012 London Olympics. In London, the country won 2 silver and 4 bronze medals, the best ever performance by India. This time we have added a gold, thanks to Neeraj Chopra’s splendid feat in the javelin event.

The US maintained its position as the world’s top sporting nation in Tokyo grabbing the highest number of medals followed by regimented China. 

India could win no medal in the Los Angeles (1984), Seoul (1988) and Barcelona (1992) Olympics and won just a bronze in Atlanta (1996) and Sydney (2000) and a silver at Athens (2004).

Shooter Abhinav Bindra won the first gold medal for the country outside hockey in the Beijing Olympics (2008) while Vijender Singh (boxing) and Sushil Kumar (wrestling) picked up a bronze each. In London (2012), Indians could not win any gold but Vijay Kumar (shooting) and Sushil Kumar (wrestling) won a silver apiece while Saina Nehwal (badminton), Mary Kom (boxing), Yogeshwar Dutt (wrestling) and Gagan Narang (shooting) were good enough for the bronze.

At the Rio de Janeiro Olympics (2016), we had to be satisfied with just a silver (P V Sindhu -badminton) and a bronze (Sakshi Malik-wrestling).

Often I am led to believe that the rise of India as a cricketing force since the 1983 World Cup victory and the kind of attention the game received over the last few decades was at the expense of other disciplines. But it needs deeper introspection.

This time, there was wide expectation that India would win more medals as the archers and shooters, going by their performance in some world events, were primed for the occasion. It wasn’t out of place either to expect some surprises in the track and field events. Besides, followers of hockey pinned high hopes on the performance of the men’s team.

The hockey squad met expectations and reached the semifinals after a 49-year wait (no semifinals were played in 1980) and deservedly won the bronze. But what happened to the shooters and archers who just faded away to the acute disappointment of a nation?

The song and dance we witness in the country over Chopra becoming India’s first-ever post-Independence medal winner in athletics (the poor man has become exhausted and sick while attending series of felicitations) throw light on our collective psyche and attitude towards sport.

It is sickening to read newspaper headlines describing someone’s failure to perform as ‘…he finished a creditable sixth.’

What does it mean? Did we send the athlete to bring up the rear? Was he or she not expected to win a medal? Then why was the person sent to the Olympics in the first place where he stood no chance of competing? Don’t tell me we send them to the Olympics for exposure.

If we settle for mediocrity and felicitate sports persons just because they participated in a world event, nothing is going to change. 

Our attitude towards sport has remained lackadaisical for decades. As a journalist, I remember the answer given by a minister, holding the portfolio of sports, in a state assembly several years ago. The minister, with little knowledge about the subject, read out his answer during Question Hour. When the questioner rose to ask a supplementary, the minister protested and told the Chair: “Sir, we should not be wasting the precious time of the legislature discussing sports.”

No one in the House protested. Other members perhaps agreed with the minister and held the same view.

Today the situation, however, has improved. The decision of the Odisha government to sponsor the Indian hockey teams for five years in 2018 came as an eye-opener and did help the game immensely. Now Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who has received much praise for his gesture, has announced that his government would continue to sponsor hockey for 10 more years and organize the next Men’s World Cup in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela. His decision has encouraged the hockey players, support staff and officials to a large extent as he personally met them and extended cash awards to the team members.

Earlier, he had announced big cash awards for the four hockey players from the state who were part of the men’s and women’s teams and offered government jobs to two of the bronze winners in the men’s team.

While such encouragement is likely to boost the morale of the athletes and fire them to achieve more, the basic mental attitude of the people has to change for better results in the sports arena. 

One of the basic flaws is that our expectations are mostly very low and to further accentuate the problem we tend to be satisfied with too little.

Besides, the parental focus on their child’s academics to the negation of every other activity has been a big reason for the lack of a sports culture. The family wants the child to study hard so that he can get a seat in the IITs or IIMs or pursue a professional course for the economic stability of the family. This pushes all other possibilities to the background.  Actually, no one can actually hold the parents responsible. Unlike in the USA or Australia, parents in India cannot see sports as a possible career for their children though cricket has been an exception. It is attracting many because of the kind of money a player can earn by playing the game in the present scenario.

Anju Bobby George, India’s only medalist at the World Athletic Championship, said India should devise its own system with an eye on our capabilities. The state should also step in and provide the required incentive to sportspersons. If an athlete required something, it should be provided. “It shouldn’t be that you ask for something and you get it after two months,” she said in an interview to a newspaper during the Tokyo Olympics.

This needs to be addressed as in a government setup, officials often don’t work as facilitators but rather create hurdles without any concern for the nation’s ultimate goal. But whenever the officials have attempted to back the athletes, improvements have been marked. 

It was an extremely good gesture on the part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally meet, encourage and interact with the Tokyo contingent on its return. He spoke to individual athletes, either complimenting them for their success or encouraging those who returned without medals. That he found time to keep a tab on the progress of the athletes came as a pleasant surprise. Hopefully, this would send a message to other officials and functionaries down the ladder.