Lindsay Pereira: The ugliness of India's sports culture

I spent a little over a decade of my teenage years training to be an athlete I wasnrsquot a very good one obviously which is why I now make a living doing things that dont 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 thingsChief 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 PicPTIIn 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 ZealandI 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 canrsquot 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 tunnelI 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 statelevel events through sheer hard work running barefoot through heats semifinals and finals before the long trudge back home on ST busesWhat 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 cricketWe 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 cricketersWe 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 dimwitted bureaucrat didnrsquot think it was important Twentyyearold 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 classWe donrsquot 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 allWhen he isnrsquot ranting about all things Mumbai Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet He tweets lindsaypereira Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom