Here Are The Lessons India Needs To Learn From Rio Olympics For It To Succeed In Tokyo 2020

Let's get straight to the point. Rio Olympics are over and India's largest-ever contingent is back with all of two medals to show for its efforts ¨C a bronze for Sakshi Malik in wrestling and a silver for PV Sindhu in badminton. Even the tiny Ivory Coast won a gold and silver each while the island nation of Fiji too won a gold.

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Clearly things are not well, and as everyone gets down to do the postmortem of our performances, often breathless, apportion blame, and move on.

Are there no positives for us from our show? What are the lessons learnt, if any? And what can be done? Let us look at them one by one.

Why India Can Take Away Positives From Rio Despite Not Winning Too Many Medals

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In short, there are several positives and that several were on the cusp of a medal shouldn¡¯t be missed by any analyst. If anything, we should be mighty proud of our athletes. They have always delivered despite, not because of the system that believes in only lip-service.

Any lessons learnt?

Hope so, but given the past record, it is unlikely. The same guys who are responsible for the fiasco would be doing the analysis, and they themselves would be giving solution. It has not helped and will not help even now. Having those who have failed us year after year to somehow offer redemption is living in a fool¡¯s paradise.

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What should we do?

Rein in federations:

The federations and the SAI and all those involved with sports in this country are a law unto themselves. They are mostly headed by fat cats with almost zero knowledge of sports. Even if there are sportspersons at the helm, they are titular heads, put there by political strongmen to do their bidding. That they do so on money that is being paid by you and I, courtesy our tax, hurts, indeed infuriates.

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In fact, the first step the government should take is to rejig these federations, perform a surgery. If not, at least make them accountable. Let them be judged like the private sector would any project. These satraps need to get out of their habit of free lunches at our expense. If they don¡¯t deliver, boot them out. Their sole interest seems to lie in free boarding, lodging, or, as someone put very bluntly ¨C ¡®touring and whoring¡¯.

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Ensure quality support staff:

Their actions are so pathetic often. Let us look at those who went to Rio itself. Pot bellied, ill-informed with zero knowledge of sports officials go as support staff. Take the case of our marathoner, OP Jaisha. While she might be exaggerating that there was no water, because there are hydration stations at prescribed intervals set up by the organisers, the fact that the stations available to each nation to offer personalized drinks were not manned tells a different story. Honestly, the Athletics Federation of India¡¯s assertion that the Indian runners had themselves refused to take such drinks is baloney.

BCCL

The support staff, knowing fully well that the temperature is scorching and one never knows when an athlete may want something, should have stationed someone there. Those two and a half hours should have been devoted to the athlete and not to sightseeing. The officials responsible for this should be booted out, and idiots who drafted and approved that explanation in the AFI behalf need to find a place to hide. They are shameless!

Boot out boors and babus:

In fact, the irresponsible behavior of our support/accompanying staff has always been a matter of shame. Except a few, most shouldn¡¯t be there as part of the contingent anyway. All of them have an ego the size of Jupiter, knowledge of sport, or even interest, is nil. And this time, the boorish behaviour of those accompanying our minister of sports made headlines after the organisers threatened to cancel their accreditation.

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The minister¡¯s office offered a lame explanation. Lame because if you say your staff didn¡¯t tell you that you weren¡¯t supposed to be there, they are NOT FIT to be there. Only buttresses the point that they are clueless. And as a minister, if Vijay Goel does not take the blame on himself, then he should at least kick out the staff that accompanied him. But will he?

Set up a National Sports University:

To be fair, there are some in the government who are thinking right. The move to set up a national sports university is a step in the right direction. But, unless its aim is defined, it would be an exercise in futility. Is the aim to produce a certain number of students, or is it to produce medal winners at international events? Will what they do be measured? The general dictum is ¨C What gets measured, gets done. Why can¡¯t this be the norm in this university too?

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There are some who want the government to set up sports institutes on the lines of IITs and IIMs, to be called Indian Institute of Sports (IIS). Some merit in this too, but again, this would miss out on ¡®catching ¡®em young¡¯.

Give incentives to corporates:

There is a lot of talk on why corporates don¡¯t invest in sportsperson. So many needless tax breaks are given to those who don¡¯t need it, several for historical reasons too. Why can¡¯t there be tax breaks for corporates who sponsor athletes, or employ them?

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In the end, while it is alright to say the government should stay away, it is wishful thinking. Government, if it has the will, can do more for sports than any corporate ever can. But, it really needs to bite the bullet and get these federations shape up and make them accountable. Make them run like private entities with clear deliverables and the option to chuck them out of they fail to deliver.

As for the politicians themselves, the less said the better. What can one say when the joker in Telangana, even as he felicitated Sindhu, promised her an even better coach so she gets the gold next time. That one statement was, in fact, the truth of Indian politicos understanding of sports and the disrespect they have for everyone, leave alone for a player cum coach of the caliber of P Gopichand.

As if all that Gopi was teaching Sindhu was how to stitch falls on sarees.

Jai Hind!