Indian athletes returning home empty-handed from international events is a familiar sight. It’s been happening so frequently and consistently that it has ceased to evoke any emotion out of sports lovers in the country. KRISHNARAJ SINGH JASANA and Abhishek purohit try to find out reasons behind this continuous agony
We had a 15-member contingent for the recently concluded World Athletics Championships and most of them did not qualify for the final events of their respective disciplines and, ironically, they were the only ones to have made the cut for the biennial event in Moscow, Russia.
It brought us to the all-familiar situation of returning home without medals. Our best fell well short against the rest of the world once again. Moscow Championships became fifth tournament of the kind where India couldn’t win a medal since Anju Bobby George’s bronze at Paris 2003.
Commendable effort and nothing brilliant would once again suffice the Indian performance. Vikas Gowda finishing seventh in the discus event or KT Irfan coming sixth till the half-time in the 20km walk before getting disqualified being the highlight makes for a sorry reading. The others included Gurmeet Singh and Chandan Singh (33rd and 34th respectively) in the men’s 20km walk, Basant Bahadur Rana and Sandeep Kumar (33rd and disqualification respectively) in the 50km walk event, Khushbir Kaur (39th) in the women’s 20km walk event, Renjith Maheshwary not advancing in the men’s triple jump and Sudha Singh repeating the same in the 3000m steeplechase event.
And, six remaining members were a part of the women’s 4x400m relay event but this time they couldn’t make the final cut as against one in 2011. This time, the team comprising Nirmala, Tintu luka, Anu Mariam Jose and M R Povamma, which had won gold in the Asian Championships in Pune last month, clocked a below-par 3:38.81 seconds in their heat, much below than the gold-winning effort 3:32.26 seconds in Pune. Experienced campaigner Ashwini Akkunji was not picked to run despite being in the six-member team as she had just joined training after being on the sidelines due to doping ban.
“This was a completely new team. They won gold at Pune. It was great and then their qualification to the worlds in itself was an achievement. Also, due to weather they were slow. This race at Moscow was a great learning experience. In coming times, they will definitely improve,” relay team coach N Ramesh told The Pioneer over phone from Patiala.
So, the reiterating questions whyIJ Can we even think of winning an Olympic or a World Championship medal in the near futureIJ Where does our problems lieIJ Why is athletics so far behind when some of the other sports like wrestling, boxing, shooting and badminton have won laurelsIJ If not the fast-paced track events, can we target niche disciplines so that our athletes can make the country proud at world stageIJ
President of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) Adille Sumariwalla, who himself has been a national level athlete, seems to have some answers. “Irfan’s disqualification is something I can’t believe, it raises eyebrows to say the least. Irfan is one of the cleanest walker’s in the world. What happened is unknown because I’ve not got the report but the decision was not believable,” he said suggesting all might not have been right when it came to Irfan’s event at the world meet.
On the other hand, chief coach Bahadur Singh Chauhan does not look at Irfan’s disqualification with a needle of suspicion.
“Irfan was going really well till 15 kilometres. We were expecting a top six finish. But, he received warnings due to knee bending. After the third warning, he was disqualified and called off the track. The rule says you can’t bend your knee. Not only Irfan, some other candidates also got disqualified. We will have a word with him,” Chauhan explained.
Irfan did not want to comment on his performance but said that more chances to compete at the international level is the right way to improve. “We (Indian athletes) are also working hard. We also put the similar number of hours in training. But, I feel that we need more exposure and experience. The more we will compete, the better we will be,” the Indian athlete who stood a good 10th in the Olympics last year, said.
And, Sumariwalla adds to the optimism saying that we’re there and thereabouts. “Have a look at the last Olympics where we had a seventh, eighth, ninth, an eleventh, twelfth and a seventeenth finish. It’s not bad. (PT) Usha could have got an Olympic medal, for that matter Anju also. Then, we’re sixth in women’s discus (Krishna Poonia) and our women’s relay team was seventh. So we’re hovering there which means a medal might come soon,” the official explained.
So, is it not feasible to have a model like the Chinese one where we shortlist certain disciplines in which the Indian contingent has a chance to fair betterIJ Have school-level camps so that athletes can be caught young and groomed so that come 2020 we have a pool of highly competitive athletes.
“We have a vigorous programme for the juniors at different levels but the difficulty comes from the fact that these juniors have to go to schools and colleges. So, the maximum we can get them is during the two-month summer vacations. While we have identified good athletes, we can’t do much with them as they can’t keep practicing throughout the year. Though, we’re clear that in certain sports like walk, jump events, middle-distance running events, it would be comparatively easier,” he added.
But, Chauhan puts that good talents are not churning out from the schools and colleges and the grassroot programmes need to be structured in a better way.
“We are progressing day by day. The problem is infrastructure-wise. Other countries have done things already. We are catching them. But, I believe the main reason is the lack of quality in the base. I mean we never see a big talent coming out from schools, colleges or universities. The intensity level is quite less and it should be addressed at the earliest.
“We need to build the infrastructure for them. We have good facilities at our big centres (NIS, SAI). Our base needs special care. We need to put them under science-based training at the earliest and keep inspiring them so that we can have larger competitions,” he said
A persistent problem for the athletes in the country is that sports as a career is still considered taboo.
Then, what is the remedyIJ Do we suddenly find a hero like Sushil Kumar or Saina Nehwal which leads to money pouring in and the sport heading in the right directionIJ Anju was one, well before anyone else, but it did not help, perhaps the difference between an Olympic medal and a World meet one.
“Athletics is highly scientific. You have over 200 countries participating and it’s a very tough sport. We need very high level of sports sciences and medicines. We need a lot of money to be put in, which we don’t have. We need good coaches, again, we do not have. We have some Russian coaches, who charge $3000 to 4000 a month but they’re not very good. If you want the best coaches, they will cost you 3-4 times that amount, which we can’t afford,” Sumariwalla said.
“Take the case of UK, they spent Rs 2,500 crores on the training of their athletes for the 2012 Olympic Games while we spent Rs 365 crores for Commonwealth Games where we won over 100 medals. We are far behind in the technical know-how and it’s very expensive. If we have it, there’s no reason why our athletes won’t win medals at the world stage.
“And, even if someone like Anju won a medal, the help did not come in. She tried and tried but nothing happened. She was also fourth in the Olympics but no one came up and said ‘we’ll support you, you concentrate on bringing a medal home’. No one came forward to help her,” the president pointed out.
Mindset, lack of money, socio-economic conditions of the athletes and even satisfaction of participation continue to make Indian athletics a case study of despair. We move from one Olympics to another and one World Championship to the next one but script remains the same. One can only look up to the heavens for inspiration.