Poised for a big leap

Perhaps it is apt that India’s golden star in the Olympic firmament has a spear in his hand, and his predecessor at the top of the podium, a gun. Neeraj Chopra and Abhinav Bindra are no warriors but both had to embody that spirit to break down barriers and cross over to unexplored territories, coming as they did from a country with little history of success in their chosen fields.

When it comes to sport, numbers generally do not lie. For India, those numbers have been depressing for the better part of their journey on the international stage. Medals in the Olympics hardly ever went past single digits. World Championships or competitions of similar stature in most sports produced sob stories and little else. Heroes were many but most were on the silver screen.

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The Olympic Games, every four years, offered a chance to dig out sepia-toned images of those eight hockey triumphs and delve into memories of near-misses that dotted the country’s sporting landscape. Beyond the Olympic spectrum, sport offered sporadic success stories that kept the flame burning. 

A Wilson Jones here, a Michael Ferreira, a Geet Sethi or a Pankaj Advani there in cue sports, the brilliance of Prakash Padukone in badminton, Davis Cup heroics shaped by the Amritraj brothers and Ramesh Krishnan, continental dominance by P T Usha and a global leap to bronze by Anju George in athletics. Surely, they served reminders that talent was not in short supply but the climb to the pinnacle was as arduous as scaling Everest without oxygen, given the systemic maladies that nagged at the core of Indian sport.

Then came Bindra. The shooter with uncommon determination and sage-like equanimity broke the stereotypical image of an Indian sportsperson with his air rifle gold at Beijing 2008, a step up from Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver in 2004. The system might have failed many talented performers in the past but Bindra fought it with all his might to go where no Indian had traversed before. The country’s first individual Olympic gold medallist had the resources at his command but even so, it called for an immense endeavour to tower above the adversities that he faced.

A rosier picture?

Fourteen years since that August moment, Indian sport presents a rosier picture. Bindra has company in that elite club of Olympic gold medallists, with Chopra joining him with his stirring effort in javelin in Tokyo last year. The one-medal syndrome seems to be a thing of the past, with Beijing marking a turning point. Tokyo 2020, with one gold, two silver and four bronze, was India’s best ever but the feeling persists that even now, the country is very much on the starting blocks, when it comes to matching talent with medal wins on the world stage.

Positive signals are all around. Already this year, the Indian sports fan experienced the exhilaration that a true global sporting triumph can bring when the badminton team claimed the Thomas Cup with an unforgettable display of skills and fortitude. Olympic medals by Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu, and the latter’s World Championship gold three years ago had already marked out the country as a force to reckon with but with the men barging into the elite list, new avenues have opened up for the shuttle sport.

Athletes, despite being bogged down by frequent doping cases, have also striven to take the big step forward, with Chopra as the inspiration and guiding light. Besides, the country can boast of a clutch of classy wrestlers and women boxers who frequently make their mark on the global stage.

Fuelling their progress is a marked change in attitude, among athletes as well as the supporters. The new generation Indian sports fan is hardly enthused by tales of past glory. The demand for success from their side is unrelenting, while the sportspersons themselves have stepped up to the plate, targeting the bigger picture, instead of being satisfied with minor, regional successes. The obstacles their predecessors faced are very much there but the incentives are bigger, the support better.

Better support

The ills of Indian sport are far too many to list. Power-mongering officials with little knowledge or interest in the growth of the sport are just one. In his book A Shot at History, Bindra threw light on this aspect in forthright fashion. “Champions have to be built. Talent found, skill sandpapered, techniques tuned, and minds strengthened. It requires a detailed and relentless pursuit of greatness. Think of it like a military operation. But it doesn’t exist in India. If producing champions was a degree, most officials would fail. It’s why so much of what is achieved is in spite of officials. It’s a pity. So much of this nation has changed around me, so many strides taken, but attitudes worn by sporting officials still arrive from another archaic century,” he wrote.

That factor might not change even in the next century but there is no doubt that support for sport is better than before. The Target Olympic Podium Scheme and other governmental programmes might not be error-free when it comes to identifying where to put the money but for an aspiring sportsperson, there is always a way forward, with backing from private entities too on the rise. Still, India’s champions cannot be called products of a system. The lack of a proper grassroots programme and training facilities are glaring in almost all sports. Only when allied with such a system can sport thrive in any country; only then will the trickles we see now turn into a torrent.

(The author is a senior sports writer.)