Mittal Champions Trust shut-down adds to the woes of the Indian Olympian

Amit Bhatia, co-founder, speaks at a Mittal Trust Champions Event

Indian sport always seems to live on the edge. At the 2012 London Olympics, it seemed ready to cross over from the edge of obscurity and enter a realm of respectability, at least as far as medal haul is concerned. But ever since then, it has been going from one controversy to another, and been dogged by one crushing setback after another, all the while still living on the edge – but this time, the edge of total disaster.

The latest in the series of setbacks for Indian sport is the shutting down of the Mittal Champions Trust, or MCT. The trust was a beacon of hope for numerous Indian Olympians in the past, and its dissolution may well signal an end to the medal hopes of many of its beneficiaries.

How the trust began

In 2004, Laxmi Mittal and his family, while on a trip to the Olympics in Athens, were on a lookout for Indian athletes at the Games so that they could cheer them on. Their search was in vain as they could not find a single Indian participant in any of the events that day.

They then met Indian tennis star Mahesh Bhupathi at Wimbledon in the same year who introduced them to Manisha Malhotra, a former Indian tennis player who was a bronze medallist at the Asian Games in 2002. The Mittals then decided to team up with the two athletes to help improve Indian sport and invested 10 million dollars into the Mittal Champions Trust (MCT) with the aim of helping India achieve its richest medal haul at the London Olympics.

The focus areas and beneficiaries of the trust

MCT decided to focus on a few Olympic disciplines such as shooting, swimming, archery, boxing, wrestling, squash and athletics. They provided the necessary infrastructure and coaches for the athletes in order to enable them to compete against the world’s best.

Abhinav Bindra, Ronjan Sodhi, Heena Sidhu and Joydeep Karmakar in shooting; Laishram Bombayala Devi and Chekrovolu Swuro in archery; Vikas Yadav,Vijender Singh, Akhil Kumar in boxing; Seema Antil, Gurmeet Singh, Krishna Poonia in athletics; Yogeshwar Dutt in wrestling have been some of the beneficiaries of the MCT.

Abhinav Bindra benefited greatly from the trust as they arranged a mental trainer and a physio for him before the Beijing Olympics. The effect was definitely visible as Bindra was able to focus at pivotal moments and clinch the first individual gold medal for the country.

The trust also helped 2012 bronze medal winner Yogeshwar Dutt in overcoming a knee injury which forced him out of the 2012 Olympics. As if that wasn’t enough, Indian badminton ace Saina Nehwal has also been a beneficiary of the trust in the past.

What went wrong?

According to Manisha Malhotra, the people who were funding the trust decided that they couldn’t spend any more money on it, which is why they had to shut shop. “They did not want to spend more money,” she said in a cryptically short message when asked about the reason for the dissolution.

Meanwhile, Laxmi Mittal’s son-in-law Amit Bhatia blamed the Indian administration. “There is a lot of disorganisation within the Indian sporting system. The lack of planning within the government and federations makes it challenging to implement systems,” he said.

The reason for the abrupt winding up of the organization is still not clear, but it is evident that one or more people didn’t see eye-to-eye with respect to the finances and operations.

What the shutting down of the trust means for India’s athletes

Indian athletes – both the Olympians and the potential Olympians – will now face a tough road ahead to find the necessary support required for them to excel at the biggest stage. The professionalism in running sport is something that will be very hard to replace, and MCT was one of the few organizations that actually walked the talk.

The proof, of course, was in the pudding – it’s no coincidence that so many of the athletes supported by the trust won accolades for India across a variety of disciplines.

As Abhinav Bindra himself said, “They introduced professionalism in the way we ran our sport and all of us benefited from it.”

We all know now, after India’s performance at the London Olympics, that there is talent in the country. But with such an important source of funding being taken away, who will that talent turn to?

Arrest of Sahara Group’s Subrata Roy makes things even worse

Sahara India Pariwar is another conglomerate that backs many Indian sports teams and athletes. The organization owns the Awadhe Warriors franchise of Lucknow in the Indian Badminton League, the Uttar Pradesh Wizards franchise in the Hockey India League and the Sahara Force India Formula 1 team, among many others.

Sahara had also adopted 95 promising individuals from six Olympic disciplines, namely wrestling, boxing, shooting, archery, track & field and tennis until and after the 2012 London Olympics with a view to help India claim more medals in the international sporting arena.

With the arrest of the founder Subrata Roy in a case of non-refund of investors’ money, all the backing of Sahara India Pariwar to the Indian athletes has come under jeopardy. The Sahara force India Formula 1 team has reiterated that the arrest of Mr. Roy won’t have a negative impact on the team, although it remains to be seen if that indeed is the case with other franchises and athletes supported by his organization.

With the Mittal Champions Trust and Sahara India both not looking likely to continue their association with Indian sport in the distant future, its about time that the sports federations in the country take the initiative to provide the necessary platform to the athletes. If that doesn’t happen, the recent surge in the Olympic medal tally for the country could very well be short-lived.