Modi’s effort to prevent Rio debacle is laudable
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s step to chart out an Olympic strategy for the next three games in 2020, 2024 and 2028 is a timely action. His announcement on Friday for setting up a task force for preparing a comprehensive action plan so as to ensure ‘effective participation’ is seen as the most urgent step for rejuvenating the sports fraternity and millions of fans who were expecting a sizeable medals in the just concluded Rio Olympics. The announcement which came at a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers for reviewing their performances vis-a-vis promises made so far by the respective Ministries will help bringing sports to the centre stage of discussion, dialogue and debate which normally is always left to specific departments and largely to the experts in the fields.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office asking to prepare a detailed report by the Sports Ministry at the end of September, citing reasons of India’s abysmal performance in Rio can also be a credible source of information for the task force which will formulate future roadmap for the upcoming Olympic Games. It is so humiliating for a country of 125 crore people which had deputed its largest contingent ever, numbering a total of 119 sportspersons, was predicted to win between 10-12 medals in Rio, in a report released by the Sports Authority of India in May proved to be disastrous.
While coming to the ground realities, it is found that many of our players are freshers and they were happy to be qualified for a world class game like Olympics. Hence they are not even expected to win and channel their precious energies, time and money pumped by the Government and sponsors towards qualification for the game. If mere qualification is the only target for some of our players, then the Government must look into this issue and take necessary steps for augmenting their morale for any future international games. Also most disheartening to note that some players who were ranked as the top national players in their games, either failed to make it to the qualifying round or get defeated in the hands of much lower ranking opponents in Rio.
This highlights and brings forth to us a disturbing trend largely prevalent among our sportspersons that many of them are not prepared to a competition like that of the Olympics and therefore they simply remained overawed by the occasion instead of giving their best. Another major drawback of the country’s sports administrators (who are sadly former players in many cases) and policymakers in the Sports Ministry is that many of the sportsmen were selected just barely before beginning of the Olympics in August. So they could not go through the three stages of preparation — rest, training and competition — mandatory for all sportsmen. It is expected that the Sports Ministry will honestly look into theses burning issues like how the pre-qualifying games took place so hastily and even then we were hoping for a double digit tally in Olympics. For showcasing the best, it would be advisable to select a smaller contingent, less of politics and inter-departmental wrangling (like in case of Narsingh Yadav) and finally offering the players best of the facilities may help the country. let us tighten our belts for Tokyo Olympics, so that we can rise above the Sindhus and Maliks.