In a welcome move for sports lovers in India, within a week of the Rio Olympics debacle, and a debacle it was ‘girl power’ et all notwithstanding; the Prime Minister’s office announced that it would set up a Task Force ‘to prepare a comprehensive action plan for effective participation of Indian sportspersons in the next three Olympic games 2020, 2024 and 2028.’
The Press Release further states that ‘the Task Force will prepare overall strategy for sports facility, training, selection procedure and other related matters,’ and shall be made up of in-house as well as experts ‘from outside.’
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This move has to be praised as never in recent memory, has such display of intent towards Olympic sports come from the highest level of authority in the country. Subsequently, the honourable Prime Minister in his monthly radio address also sought ideas from the general public on how to improve sports in the country. These initiatives will be considered landmark for India’s Olympic movement, only if the Government can ensure proper implementation of a plan- hitherto considered the bane of independent India not only on the sporting front but on all administrative fronts.
Suggestions and solutions started pouring in from all well-meaning quarters as it became clear that India’s Rio 2016 campaign was not quite going according to realistic expectations. Angst and frustration did as well, but that is natural given London 2012 brought in a best-ever haul of six medals for the country.
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The ascending medal graph of the last two decades started by Leander Paes in the 1996 Atlanta Games had abruptly gone into reverse gear as Rio saw India win a meagre two medals to end up as the worst performing country of the Olympics per capita. Make no mistake. It was a very poor performance and does not behove a country of our international standing, whatever be our internal problems.
Much has been said about what went wrong. The time, though, has come to look ahead, look at the positives and take immediate and concrete corrective action. Which is what hopefully the Task Force will do.
As stated, there are several aspects affecting the growth of Olympic sports in India that the Task Force can set right. From identifying and focussing on strength areas, to inducting professionals and athletes into the top echelons of sports administration, building more sports infrastructure, devising and implementing modern training programmes to bringing in the best coaches, sports medicine experts and coaching methods- the list is exhaustive. However, the first thing the Task Force should do is to set itself medal targets for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
It is all well to set up a Task Force for the next three Olympics. The danger with setting such long-term targets, particularly in a country like India, is that you never know whom to hold accountable if results do not show up after 12 years. Governments might change and we have seen that with Governments, policies and committees and task forces also change. Worse, they become deflection strategies and excuses for bad performances in the immediacy.
For example, the Australian authorities had devised a programme titled ‘Winning Edge’ with the objective of making the country among the top five in the Olympics medal tally. With their performance dipping at Rio from the previous Games at London (they went down to 10 from eight), amidst severe criticism their authorities have now been trying to give the excuse that the programme was planned for 10 years and it has now just been five years into the programme.
Therefore, the only way to measure the efficacy of the Prime Minister’s Task Force and whether it should be carried forward or disbanded for something more effective would be India’s medal haul at the Tokyo 2020 games.
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Critics might argue that the rot in sports is so deep that four years is too less a time to get things back on track. Agreed. But four years is a lot of time to at least show marked and visible improvement. Whatever system or the lack of it, that has been in place for all these years, did get us six medals in London.
In fact, the three at the 2008 Beijing Games were also better than the haul of two at Rio. And if we actually dissect the performance of the Indian contingent at Rio, we would find that our athletes were as competitive if not more at the highest levels of their sport and in more disciplines than in London.
So, if in London we were competitive in Shooting, Wrestling, Boxing and Badminton, in Rio in addition to these four, we were also competitive in Archery, Men’s Hockey, Gymnastics and Tennis. In all these eight disciplines, we competed at the highest level, lost to World Champions or World number ones, reached finals, lost to eventual Gold or Silver medallists and so on and so forth. The difference between London and Rio was the conversion into medals.
The benchmark for the Prime Minister’s task force should, therefore, be the six medals won at London and they should look to improve upon this at Tokyo given that the level of competitiveness has not gone down at Rio as established.
Ten medals with at least one Gold should be a bare minimum target for Tokyo 2020. Ten, because seven, eight or nine, though improvements over six look odd as targets. And at least one Gold medal as this has been achieved before so nothing is being demanded that has not been done before and the fact that Gold moves you up the medal tally considerably.
In the end, even if we end up with seven medals at Tokyo without a Gold, we could give a thumbs up to the Task Force. Anything below would mean that as usual in India it was all bluster and no substance and lessons were still not learnt.
