Paris 2024 is done and dusted. Another edition of the Olympics where as usual, we end up behind some of the smallest countries in the world like this time behind Dominican Republic and Dominica. This four-yearly disgrace has now become a habit.
A large majority of Indians would not even have heard of Dominican Republic and Dominica and may even think these are the same. No, they aren’t. Both a small Caribbean nation, Dominican Republic speaks Spanish, and as a population of 10 million, which is about one third of Kerala, Dominica speaks English and has a mere 72,000 population. That’s about the number of people on all the platforms of Church Gate Station in Mumbai in a couple of peak time hours. St. Lucia is another small Caribbean Island with a mere 180,000 people. The point is Dominican Republic, Dominica, and St. Lucia are all above India when it comes to the world’s most prestigious sporting event, the Olympics. Take a look at the Paris 2024 medal table and imagine there is a celebratory sit-down dinner for all the winners. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are the US, China, Japan, Australia, and France. That’s the sporting high table.
We have no business hanging around there, so let’s move to the side tables where we find nations like Botswana and St. Lucia at 55, Dominican Republic at 59 and Dominica and Pakistan at 62. We don’t belong there either because they all have a gold medal, which we don’t. So, we can move out of the main hall and find a table outside where we can be seated with Kyrgystan and North Korea at 68 and Lithuania at 70, all three of them have two silver medals each against the single one that Neeraj Chopra earned for us. So, we can pull chair number 71 and be seated there while seated there. Let’s not even cast a glance at the adjoining table where we find tiny nations like the Republic of Moldova at 72 and Kosovo 73, wondering what the world’s most populous nation with most number of youth is doing there with a single silver medal just like them.
Some Olympics statistics just stare at us, showing what utter misfits we are in sports. In 124 years, since 1900 when Norman Pritchard represented us, India has a mere 41 medals gold, silver, and bronze put together. For context, China has 40 gold medals in the Paris Olympics alone. Another Olympics stat can make us embarrassed is that India’s 41 medals earned over 124 years, 13 are from the latest two editions, Tokyo and Paris. Not counting those 13, we have 28 medals, which is exactly equal to the number of medals one single American athlete swimmer Michael Phelps has won. Not counting Tokyo and Paris Olympics, the dashboard would read India in 116 years – nine gold, seven silver, and 12 bronze medals. Michael Phelps in five Olympics, 23 gold, three silver, and two bronze medals.
At the end of the 2016 Olympics. India, 28 medals. Michael Phelps, 28 medals. Thank goodness we picked up 13 more medals over the last two Olympics to take 1.4 billion Indians ahead of one US swimmer.
India’s hockey teams have won eight gold medals in all. Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in the 2008 Olympics alone.
Some of India’s performances at the Olympics are simply unforgivable. Lack of women’s 4×400 metres team in Paris. In the 1984 Olympics, India’s 4×400 metres team of PT Usha, Shiny Wilson, MD Valsamma and Vandana Rao had clocked three minutes 32.49 seconds and entered the final. A good 40 years later in Paris, our women’s 4×400 team clocked three minutes, 32.51 seconds and was eliminated in the first round. Imagine clocking a time that is slower than 40 years ago. Ronojoy Sen, author of Nation at Play, a history of sport in India has said there is no doubt that India is an underperformer in the Olympics and generally in global sports. But pray, why?
Multiple reasons. One, India’s parents would rather make doctors out of all the children, not sports persons. Two, consider India’s school education where physical training is often for one hour in an entire week, and there are numerous schools across the country that have no playgrounds. Why would they have playgrounds when education in India is about cracking the NEET, NET, JEE and the civil services examinations.
By the way, this week, a school soccer coach in Salem, Tamil Nadu was caught on camera assaulting his players for losing a game, mercilessly, slapping and kicking his players one by one. Thirdly, we are such an unhealthy society that sport doesn’t come easy to us. India ranks a lowly 111 out of 125 countries in the Global Hunger Index, which measures under nutrition. We have the world’s highest child wasting rate, which is the number of children too thin for their height, and more than one third of our children under five are stunted due to undernutrition, meaning they’re too short for their age.
Our child wasting rate is 18.7%. Even war-torn Yemen at 14.4% and Sudan at 13.7% are better, but more than the parental craving to raise doctors schools without playgrounds and physical training and the widespread undernutrition and child wasting. There’s another factor that makes us such sporting misfits. Our aversion to abide by rules and merit. As a society will do anything possible to be entitled to bend the rules, to subvert merit, to get by through recommendation, any shortcut to success. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work in sport, which is all about discipline, merit, and playing by the rule book. Therefore, when a Vinesh Phogat is disqualified for being overweight by 100grams, our characteristic mindset asks, isn’t there some way we can get her back in? Only India didn’t seem to understand that an overweight contestant cannot compete. Attempting to gain reentry for an athlete who has clearly crossed the weight limit is typical of a society that cannot understand or obey a red signal at a traffic junction, refuses to wear helmets and seat belts, cannot form a line anywhere and jump queues without the slightest of guilt.
If that’s our mindset, we can be the most populous country, be the fifth largest economy, land a spacecraft on the moon, but sports that calls for a totally different character. For now, our consolation is though we are champion under performers, we are champions in coining slogans. So, we shout Khelo India, whatever that means.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Scaria is presently Kerala correspondent with Gulf News, Dubai; formerly with Economic Times. He runs a popular YouTube channel by the name of Joe-Metric View.
