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Our Quadrennial Debacle At the outset, a tribute. On September 19, Goans were in for some extremely tragic tidings. The day saw the passing away of three of Goa’s ‘A one’ musicians, Dharmendra Hirve, Selwyn Pereira and Victor Alvares, following a road mishap in the vicinity of Lucknow. Prodigiously talented, the threesome had won a googol of admirers the world over. Their music certainly had, as William Congreve would have said, “the charm to soothe even the most savage breast”. With these three stars gone, Goa’s musical firmament has irretrievably lost quite a bit of its glitter. My heart goes out to the bereaved families of the departed trio and also to Goa’s pop-singing supremo, Remo, whose internationally acclaimed band has been cruelly undone by the fickle finger of fate. May the souls of the deceased ‘trinity’ rest in eternal peace! And now a little bit about the Olympics. At the time of going to press, the Sydney Olympic Games are at their fag end. And as things stand, the USA, like in the past few editions of the Olympics, looks all set to take the top slot yet again. Surprise, surprise, in the second position is neither Russia, nor Germany, but India’s contiguous neighbour China, with a tally of no fewer than 56 medals, 26 of them being the aureate ones – golds. Rather sadly, in stark contrast to China, India’s overall showing at Sydney has been abysmal. Once again, it has been the same old sob story, we have got used to hearing, quadrennially. Just a solitary bronze is what India’s grotesquely outsize contingent has managed to acquire and that too thanks to the unexpectedly brilliant showing from that buxom lady from Andhra Pradesh, Karnam Malleshwari. Else, India would have had the ignominy of drawing an absolute blank, medalswise, at Sydney like it had in three successive Olympics, at Los Angeles, Seoul and Barcelona, previously. For Goans, in particular, the ongoing sports extravaganza has turned out to be bitterly disappointing. They were hoping to see a medal-winning repeat performance from their darling tennis star, hailing from Velim, Leander Paes. But Leander, unlike at Atlanta four years ago, just failed to come off at Sydney. Obviously his long layoff from the game due to injury had a lot to do with that inept performance. In the wake of its comprehensive win over Argentina and an honourable draw against puissant Australia, one thought India stood a pretty good chance of picking up a hockey medal on this occasion. But its subsequent loss to South Korea and a draw against Poland marked the end of the Indian challenge in hockey. It is very distressing indeed to see India, a regular Olympic hockey gold medal winner of yesteryear, now not being able to come anywhere near to picking up even a bronze in this discipline. What a fall! Looking back, one can’t help feeling that for India, to be able to achieve whatever little it did in the current Olympics, a squad one tenth the size it sent Down Under would have sufficed. The ‘official’ justification for India’s gargantuan representation at every Olympiad has been, “to give our athletes an international exposure”. This is absolutely rubbish! Take it from me, this type of ‘exposure’ never has done, nor will it ever do, any good to our foreign-jaunt-happy sportsmen. Had it been beneficial, India would not have stagnated close to the cellar in the Olympic rankings all these years. Far from gaining from that ‘exposure’, the grossly surplus Indian representatives at the Olympiads only end up exposing to the world the stark barrenness of India’s sports cupboard. Indeed, some of our athletes boast of awesome names. Take for example just two – Bahadur Singh and Shakti Singh. But their bahaduri (bravery) or shakti (strength) has never been on display beyond the ‘Asian boundary’. It’s to be seen in the national and Asian games only. Thrust into the Olympic arena, these lions at home get transmogrified into hopelessly lame lambs. What a shame! Fancy that! A tiny Caribbean nation like Trinidad and Tobago with a population one thousandth the size of India’s has almost invariably been finishing well ahead of India in the Olympic competition. Why should this happen_ The powers that be governing Indian sports certainly owe us an explanation. When India drew a blank at Seoul, the Government of India, post haste, founded the Sports Authority of India (SAI) for the express purpose of improving India’s showing in future Olympics. So far, including the current one, three Olympics have been held since SAI’s establishment, but our performance hasn’t improved even by a jot. I dare say, just about everything is grossly amiss vis-à-vis the promotion of sports in India. That’s the long and the short of it. If China, the most populous country in the world and facing not too dissimilar problems to India’s could blossom into a sports super power, why India, the second most populous country, can’t do likewise. Ours is a conspicuous case of keeping up with the Chinese, only in respect of population, that is. How I wish we could do the same in sports as well. Happy Dussera, happy Diwali. Questions or Comments_ Please write to us at:
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