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CAUSES OF POOR PERFORMANCE OF

INDIAN ATHLETES IN OLYMPICS

Gaurav Kumar

16122009

OBJECTIVES

Analyze the reasons responsible for Indias poor

performance in Olympics.
Look for possible solutions for the issue.

CAUSES
In terms of population size and medals won, there is no worse Olympic
performer than India. It seems strange that a country of more than 1.2
billion people can only collect an average of less than one medal per
Games. Beijing 2008 was Indias most successful Olympics to date; it
finished with one Gold and two Bronze medals. That is over 383 million
people per medal, the highest ratio of all competing nations at Beijing.

It would be untrue to say that India does not produce good sportsmen and
women: The Indian mens field hockey team won six consecutive Olympic
Golds in the mid-20th century (field hockey accounts for more than half of
Indias historical total of 20 Olympic medals). There is no doubt that India
has sporting talent, so,

Why does it fail to translate this into Olympic success?

Poor infrastructure: Countries like USA, China spend

millions of Dollars for a single medal whereas our athletes
Manish Singh does 2-part time jobs. There are many more
examples like Manish Singh.

Nobody backs them up: Our sport Minister does not know
the exact name of the ones who make us proud.

Lack of physical fitness: Even a middle class family has a

servant to fetch children with a glass of water. Even if a person
is fit, the Bollywood industry and modelling industry is big
enough to give them a break.

No country can be good at everything: We produce

finest Engineers, managers, Entrepreneurs. Maybe athletics is

not yet too mainstream.

Our society never takes athletics seriously: Sharma

Uncle will always consider swimming and Cycling as a hobby
and will not accept it as a profession.

There have been some academic studies that suggest the total population
of a country is irrelevant when it comes to Olympic medal tallies, but that
rather what counts is the part of a population that participates effectively
in sports. Olympians are drawn, not from the entire population of a
country, but only from the share that is effectively participating. Low
medal tallies can arise both because a country has very few people and
because very few of its people effectively participate. They go on to
contend that there are certain factors that limit effective participation.
Those factors, are health, education, public information and what they call
physical connectedness i.e. a populations ability to travel. In other
words, an unhealthy individual is unlikely to participate in sport; an
educated individual is likely to be more ambitious and school attendance
increases the chance that talent will be spotted and developed; in terms
of public information, an individual can only aspire to be an Olympic
athlete if he or she has heard about the Olympics via the media; and
where there is little physical connectedness in remote, isolated villages,
many sporting jewels may go undiscovered. In rural India, where life
expectancy and primary school enrolment are below the world average
and where there is more limited access to the outside world both
physically and communication-wise, much of the effective participating
population is lost.

But the 2011 Indian Census tells us that the urban population in India is
over 370 million people, the equivalent of the USA and Russia combined.
That is still a massive pool of talent than almost anywhere else on Earth.
Parents here have the authority to take the decisions in their childs life.
Especially post-independence, Indian parents gave a lot of importance to
academics and sport was considered as a time pass activity or just for
recreational purpose. Sport was never a priority for a majority of parents
and their kids. In fact, we have a saying in Hindi Indias National
language Kheloge kudoge to honge kharab, padhoge likhoge to
banoge nawab which means that your life will be a waste if you play
but if you study or do well in academics you will be a king. Although we
have the best of the academic schools and universities, we do not have
good sports facilities and good sports academics. We did not have well
maintained playgrounds; equipment was not available and if it was, then it
was not in good condition, no proper support staff, no athlete-friendly
sports policies.

We are still in the developing phase. Young Indians are given opportunity
but the facilities and opportunities are not enough, we still have to
improve a lot. Things are definitely changing now and are changing for the
better.

One reason is most of our sports associations are controlled by geriatric

politicians who treat them as their personal jagirdars. These esteemed
gentlemen dont do anything for the sport, treat the athletes like bonded
labor, but ensure they and their hangers on in babudom, turn up at every

sporting event. So that they can get their pictures clicked and share it too
all. Lets have a look at some of the major Indian sporting associations and
who heads them.

Archery Association of India- Headed by Vijay Kumar Malhotra, BJP

leader. His contribution has been nothing significant at all, yet he still
continues to rule there, unchallenged.

Badminton Association of India- Akhilesh Das, a politician with

some colleges to his credit, again zilch contribution. Our success in
Badminton has been primarily due to Gopichands Academy in
Hyderabad.

All India Football Federation- Praful Patel, yeah the same guy
accused of ruining Air India.

These are just a few examples, but the fact is most sport administrators,
are just interested in the seat. They dont care for the athletes and their
facilities at all. Most of the athletes have to make do with cramped
accommodation provided in stadiums or some dingy hotel rooms, travel
2nd class and after a days training take the auto or bus back home. And
these administrators, and officials fatten themselves at the expense of
athletes, travel by flight or 2nd AC, live in star hotels. There is no
transparency in selection of candidates, many a time, the sifarish
concept works. If our athletes are still doing well it is despite the system,
not because of it. The success stories in Indian sports is due to the
outstanding effort by some individuals and bodies. Gopichands Academy

has been consistently producing champion shuttlers. Similarly, the

akharas and vyayamshalas of Haryana, Western UP, have been throwing
up some really excellent wrestlers. Most of them are run by dedicated
people, with a genuine interest in the sport, and with exposure to modern
training and facilities, they will do even better. Similarly, the Indian Army
with their professional training has given some excellent shooters in
recent times.

But the fact is we need more such efforts like these, especially in Athletics
and Swimming, two of the big ticket events at Olympics. The Tata
Foundation has been doing a good job, in this regard. And I hope more and
more corporates, take this up. Ultimately to produce a diamond, you need
to polish it well. These athletes have the talent, the desire, the hunger,
the motivation, but they need the right guidance, the right coaching, good
infrastructure and training to succeed at the highest level.

CONCLUSION

India needs to localize different sports. To produce medals India would

have to localize different sports in different regions. India is so crowded
country that it becomes very difficult for person to particularly improve in
a sport. Someone with great skills might not be able to go out improve
further unless there are opportunities and resource. The step the country
(government should) should take is to make sports popular and accessible
in regions with talent for the sport.
For instance, India is good at wrestling but not that good to win an
Olympic silver medal. But India has so much unused potential that if right
thing is done India would become king of this sport. In Haryana (state)
which has history of wrestling, still continues to be a popular sport but it
hasn't produced a silver or gold yet. If we set good wrestling complexes in
each city of state equipped with good infrastructure and coach, I have no
doubt that there would be a good number of medals from wrestling. In
north eastern part of India if India sets sport complexes then that part of
our country could become best at sports like archery, boxing, shooting,
table tennis, badminton. I mean if make different sports popular in
different cities of our country and give them the title being the capital of
shot put or 100 m hurdles lakhs of people like to join it and if they are
motivated they could become excellent in sports. India also lacks sports
shops, very rarely you will find a sport shop near a rural area. To improve
the performance, we first need to spark a lot of interest for the various
games and events that are competed in the Olympics. This can be done
by improving the quality of our state level and national level games meet.

These events are hardly televised live on television and the results often
find no mention on prime time television.
The different sports federations and the Sports Authority of India(SAI) are
bureaucratic bodies and so their preparations and arrangements will
obviously be not up to the standard. If these national events can be
organized on the scale of IPL or Pro Kabaddi, then the athletes and the
event will be able to garner a lot of limelight and our kids will find it
interesting and I am sure a lot of them will take up one or more of the
games.
If we can get a lot of sports person, then at least a healthy percentage of
them can be medal winners. Schools also need to focus more on sports
than they are doing now.

All India needs to do to increase the number of Olympic medals it wins is

start investing twenty billion rupees a year in supporting its elite athletes.

For comparison and to show the effect of investment, its useful to look at the rise of the
British Olympic team:

In the Atlanta Olympics of 1996, Britain was 36th in the medal table,
winning only a single gold medal. After that relative failure, funding skyrocketed, increasing to over a quarter of a billion pounds (over twenty
billion rupees) a year.
As well as sheer amount of investment, there has been a fairly brutal
focusing, targeting investment only on sports with medal potential. Some
sports where there is little chance of Britain winning a medal have had
funding cut completely - volleyball for example.
All that means that elite British athletes with medal potential have now
got a huge amount of financial support and access to the best coaching
and training facilities.

And so they win: in 2012 Britain was third in the medal table, winning
twenty-nine gold medals. Its on target to do similarly in Rio, having won
sixteen gold medals already.
On average, each medal costs Britain 4.5 million (~400 million rupees)
Where did the money come from? A National Lottery - twenty percent of
the proceeds from the British National Lottery are allocated to sport.
India has a huge population, and human genetic potential is spread evenly
across the world, so there are plenty of people in India with the potential
to win Olympic medals, but they never get a chance.

So, the question is simply this: does India want to win medals at the
Olympics? If so, then it simply has to start investing in its athletes

What can India do?

An aspect that needs to be understood is that an athlete is in his or

her prime between 20 and 30 years of age. This means that they
have to attain peak performance somewhere close to 22, which
requires talent to be identified and nurtured from a very young age,
mostly around 12 years of age.

There is also a need for a support system that will enable even
district level sportspersons to find a job and sustain their career
without worrying about their finances. The problem right now is that
a lot of talent is lost to lack of a reliable future in sports.

Instead of rewarding players post facto (i.e. after they win medals),
there should be a support program that provides funding of at least
INR 10 lakhs/athlete/year for the top 100 athletes in the country

which should allow them to use better equipment, afford better

coaches and get overseas training, if required.

India also needs to learn to embrace all sports, rather than a

handful. The more talent we promote, the better are our chances to
win medals. That said, we should focus our energy and resources
more on some of the core sports that India has been traditionally
good at hockey, archery, shooting, wrestling, boxing and
weightlifting while also developing talent in areas that have more
medals on offer swimming, gymnastics and athletics.

With programs like Target Olympic Podium, Olympic Gold Quest and
other similar programs, there is still hope. However, the
expectations should be realistic. Such programs take at least a
decade to bear fruit, if not more.