Olympics happen every 4 years. Immediately follows are our recriminations, on why we suck in them. So, I decided to do some digging. I wanted to know who actually runs the sport federations, in which our athletes compete. And the results are not very surprising.
I analysed 32 positions across Athletics, Badminton, Boxing, Shooting, Hockey, Archery, Weightlifting, Swimming and TT. And here are some tidbits.
Except Hockey and Athletics, no President is a sportsperson.
All Presidents except Athletics are politicians.
The Hockey President is both a sportsperson and a politician. The only one in that category. Now, if you go one level below, at the Senior Vice President or Hon Secretary General (I have no idea what it means) – Except Athletics and TT, none of them are sportspersons. Eight People at that level are also politicians.
Now this is where things start getting murky!
All these federations have a position called Vice President. There are sum total of 63 VPs, across all these federations. And, guess how many of them are sportspersons? Six. In fact, the Table Tennis Federation of India, doesn’t even have profile pictures of their VPs.
Some sporting bodies such as Archery, Boxing, Weightlifting and Swimming are made entirely of Politicians. They have Zero sportspersons in the governing body.
All these sporting federations are responsible for preparing and sending our athletes to the Olympics. And guess how many Olympians are present in these positions? A grand total of four. And in that 4 Olympians – two belong to the Athletics Federation.
And in this digging, there are some other interesting facts that I stumbled across.
The secretary general of Hockey is a guy named Bhola Nath Singh. Now 2 years ago, he was Wrestling Federation of India Vice President. Now he is running Hockey. Must be a very talented man!
The story of our Table Tennis Federation is even more incredible. Dushyant Chautala, the Haryana politician was the President of TTFI from 2017 to 2022, when the Delhi High Court suspended it citing “Sorry State of Affairs”. They ordered a fresh set of elections for President. And guess who stood and won in that elections – the first woman President of TTFI – Meghana Ahlawat. Who also happens to be the wife of Dushyant Chautala.
He totally Laloo Prasad Yadaved the post of TTFI President. And we have to live with it. There are so many things this Government is doing to improve the sporting calibre of this country. But unless and otherwise we clean the Aegean Stable of Indian Sports Federations – we will continue to recriminate after every Olympics – instead of Celebrating.
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Nice narration, we received from a friend, on a social media post. The author remains unknown as it has passed many hands. We remain indebted to the author. We remain keen to engage with him.
