After a jam-packed day one of India’s Premier Sports Literature Festival, Play Write, the day two was filled with bigger sporty vibes on Sunday.
A session held on the rules and regulations in sports, issues like match fixing featured former Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Justice Mukul Mudgal, sports lawyers Desh Gaurav Sekhri and Aahna Mehrotra, who sat in conversation with sports writer and expert Novy Kapadia.
Justice Mudgal, who headed the Supreme Court-appointed probe into the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal, said, “With money comes temptations and that is what has led to activities like spot fixing, match fixing in the cricket world. Match fixing has become a cancer in cricket today. So, definitely we require serious laws for it. It is because when you act against the interest of your country, it far beyond than breaking a law and there should be a serious system of punishment.”
Aahna said, “The thing is that people don’t tend to understand that the fact the whole economics of sports is based on the unpredictability of the sport. If everyone knows that everything is fixed, they lose interest in it and it affects the economics. It is a serious offence when you try to damage the image of your country and there should be principles of punishments.”
Earlier, the second day of the Literature Festival started with the awakening story of Alexi Grewal, the only American cyclist to win a gold medal during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angles. For the session, Alexi sat in conversation with moderator Chitranjan Agarwal, also the co-founder of the event.
During the one hour of his encounter with the audiences, Alexi made it sure that his story of victory is well heard by each in everyone sitting in attendance. And, his impelling words were powerful enough to ignite the uncherished dreams of many out there.
The son of a Punjabi father and a German mother, Alexi began his story right from the days when he was bullied by the kids of his school.
“Unfortunately, I got a lot of rash behaviour of racism from my schoolmates, perhaps because of my skin colour. I was absolutely dark-skinned back then and that made me under confident, but cycling is what I received through genes. Becoming a cyclist was equal to becoming a nomadic and leading a tough life, yet there was no single reason for this passion to become my profession,” said Alexi, who won his gold medal when he was 23.
After his victory, Alexi said that he could see the changing perceptions about him. “From being a bullied school kid, I became a celebrity and the change was hard for me to digest. Because I was still the same person!”
However, the veteran cyclist doesn’t prefer to be a full-time coach for the aspirant cyclists. He said that he is always ready to facilitate the young aspirants especially from India to take up cycling as a career.
The event next witnessed a session dedicated to the sports photography and it featured two enthusiast sports photographers Kopal Goyal and Yasho Saboo in conversation with renowned sports author G Rajaraman.