Athletes like PV Sindhu are a slap in the face of a country that has never given much importance to anything other than cricket
I spent a little over a decade of my teenage years training to be an athlete. I wasn’t a very good one, obviously, which is why I now make a living doing things that don't involve running, jumping or stretching. What I do remember is a bunch of incredibly talented teenagers who trained with me at the time though. These were lithe young men and women who were blessed with extraordinary abilities. They leapt over hurdles, sand pits and crossbars with ease, sprinted across tracks without breaking into a sweat, and put an insane amount of time into training because they believed it would lead them to bigger and better things.
Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh N Chandrababu Naidu felicitates Olympic silver medalist PV Sindhu in Vijayawada on Tuesday. Also seen are her coach Pullela Gopichand and fellow shuttler Srikanth Kidambi (R). Pic/PTI
ADVERTISEMENT
In any other country, they would have found support, encouragement and sponsorship. All they got at the time was inadequate facilities, substandard equipment and limited access to coaching. There were a number of track and field events right through the year, but none of them ever helped push any of these talented youth to the next level. Almost none of them live in Bombay anymore. Most have given up on India completely, and some of them now train young sportspeople in places like Canada and New Zealand.
I tend to think about those men and women from my past whenever an event like the Olympics comes around, which is also when people who have never set foot onto a sports ground start to wonder why a nation of one billion people can’t win a gold medal. I remember the toll those training sessions used to take on athletes as well as their families, the financial strain around events that demanded better equipment, and how some of those athletes continued to keep going, year after year, only in the hope that some government job under the sports quota would wait for them at the end of that long tunnel.
I remember young athletes standing in the sun hours after the end of their events, waiting for the arrival of uncaring officials who would stop by to dole out measly medals and certificates that guaranteed nothing. I remember sand pits with the sand packed so hard that athletes attempting a long jump would brace themselves for the shock and possible ankle sprains on impact. I remember poorer competitors from villages and towns across Maharashtra who made it to state-level events through sheer hard work, running barefoot through heats, semi-finals and finals before the long trudge back home on ST buses.
What PV Sindhu pulled off a few days ago reminded me of those athletes again. Ignored by a government that spends more time and money deciding which officials should accompany sportspeople abroad, than on actually making things better for the sportspeople themselves, people like Sindhu are a slap in the face of a country that has never given much importance to anything other than cricket.
We do nothing to support local sportspeople, allow our corporators to give away our public spaces to private clubs owned and managed by their relatives, and encourage our children to look at sporting events only as a means to an end, unless they show some promise as cricketers.
We now put up Facebook posts congratulating Sindhu, while our politicians are rushing to award her cash prizes and parcels of land so they can get photographs clicked with her and then upload them to their own Facebook pages, in hopes of gaining some mileage by basking in her reflected glory. None of these politicians moved a finger to help Sindhu until she qualified for the finals. That other astonishing representative of our country, Dipa Karmakar, was denied access to a physiotherapist, presumably because some dim-witted bureaucrat didn’t think it was important. Twenty-year-old Dutee Chand, the only woman sprinter from India who participated in the 100m category, revealed that she was compelled to travel to Rio on an economy class flight ticket, while officials accompanying her flew business class.
We don’t have the right to discuss what our sportspeople do until we get to our nearest local grounds and take a look at how children attempting to participate in any sport are being treated. We have sports bodies, sports committees and sports ministries stuffed to the brim with people who do nothing but plan their next foreign holidays at the expense of our sportspeople. We continue to say nothing until the Olympics comes around and reminds us that for every PV Sindhu there are a million others who never stand a chance. Shame on us all.
When he isn’t ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
