Indian Sports: Moving Beyond the 'Bronze' Curse

OR A ‘Bronze’ medal for India implies a below-par effort by Indian sports administrators.

The India show at the 2014 Asian Games exposes one grim reality of Sport in India – that our ‘Killer’ Instinct and ‘Fighting’ spirit lasts only till we reach the sweet spot where a medal is assured.

The color is of no significance, is the takeaway that India’s medal haul symbolizes. India’s is probably the most uneven spread of medals, when it comes to comparing the Golds, the Silvers and the Bronze medals won by other countries in the fray.

Isn’t this against the very essence of modern-day multi-event sporting endeavours - that of ‘Sirius, Altius, Fortius’, which also symbolise the Olympic Spirit?

And yet, this rationalization does not do justice to the athletes. For them this ‘Bronze’ symbolizes ‘Gold’, for they were not really competing with athletes from all over Asia; they were in fact competing against the Indian Sports Administration System, one that is increasingly values results over quality, and that too, of a questionable nature.

The murky politics-tainted waters of Indian Sports don’t provide clear-cut answers or even point to the right sources. The fallback rests on evaluating an important reason that could go into explaining this phenomenon, that of inappropriate incentivisation, in that a ‘medal’ is considered the ultimate accomplishment, irrespective of the colour. With sports being controlled by administrators who have little or no experience of having actually competed at the international level, and with a majority of sportspersons being financially insecure, the bottom-lines defined, vis-à-vis player performance dictates how India projects itself at such games. A lack of professional expertise amongst the Indian Sports Administration bodies (or where expertise is available, a lack of ‘authority’) is a major flaw that can explain this spirit-less pursuit of glory.

Unlike a corporate mind-set (increasingly taking the fancy of Indian Sports administrators), which considers ‘results’ to be the Holy Grail, a sports-focused mind-set need to define an appraisal system, which embody the very spirit sports combined with the aspirations of the citizens.

Make no mistake, Indian sport has come a long way indeed in recent years, but it does require a course-correction – to rectify its major flaw today – that of sportspersons not giving it their all, at all times. ‘Settling’ for bronze is not what we like to read about in the paper. Winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the audience, the opposition and the supporters back home is what champions are made of.

Milkha Singh, India’s most respected athlete ever, may not have won a medal, but neither did he ‘settle’ for anything less than his ‘best’. It is this ‘best’ that we want to witness when India takes to the field, because ‘medal or not’, these are the performances that history will preserve for posterity.

NOTE: This article does not in any way criticize the performance of Indian athletes. It only reflects on the ills of the Indian sports administration system that revolves around a flawed incentivisation principle. It needs to be remembered that ‘administrators’ and other ‘support staff’ are vital cogs in the process, and hence we send a huge number of them along with the athletes to such games. They have to carry responsibility for India’s performance at the games. Nothing less will do.

(Picture Courtesy: Korea.net)