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Tag: Olympics

  • What ails Indian Sports?

    What ails Indian Sports?

    Another leap year brings another bucket full of disappointments. Its not enough that we have 365 days of suffering that every four years we must have an extra day of distress. Just like democracy where people suddenly realize the rampant corruption, the inequalities of society & the downright poor performances of the sitting government 2 weeks before the election even though they didn’t give two hoots about it for 300+ weeks, the Indian public suddenly awakens to realize we cannot produce consistent medal winners in the Olympics.

    People who don’t know what a balance beam is instantly become the judges who gave Nadia Comaneci the perfect 10 and talk as though they personally taped Kerri Strug’s ankle and made her win on one leg. Instead of looking at the root cause of the failure the tendency is to just blame and find a scapegoat. The lowest hanging fruit in our case being: Cricket. These folks completely ignore that fact that ever since India, in one of the biggest upsets ever, won the world cup in 1983 we have been one of the most consistent teams in the tournament of the once-every-four-years kind. Our win/loss ratio is 2nd only to powerhouses Australia.

    The Indian hockey federation resisted shifting to astroturf till the 90s and kept crying conspiracy while Pakistan went ahead with the changes and were exceptionally successful till the mid-90s. Whilst our national hockey federation was crying & sobbing conspiracy theories, the Indian cricket team went ahead with its business and went on to enjoy some of its greatest successes in the decade of 2000-10.

    Not to mention there are enough single sports mad nations that produce consistent winners in major Olympic disciplines. Brazil are as mad about football as India is about cricket but that hasn’t stopped Brazil from producing one of the best volleyball teams, possibly the best ever F1 race car driver and very good basketball players who play for the best NBA teams.

    Politicians & Businessmen in Sports are Goooooood!

    There is a tendency in India to not trust politicians and businessmen and if politicians & businessmen come together it is apocalypse now. The reason Indian athletes’ struggles at the summit is heavily attributed to politicians running various Indian sports bodies. This has no real basis in truth. BCCI is run by politicians & private businessmen.

    M A Chidambaram, M Chinnaswamy, Mamen were tycoons who have done great things for cricket purely out of interest. BCCI’s ascent was powered by NKP Salve the savvy Marathi politician. He brought the world cup to India and the first world cup outside England was a rousing success. BCCI went from strength to strength and once Jagmohan Dalmiya, another businessman, took over, BCCI signed massive TV contracts and filled its coffers with so much money that it made Scrooge McDuck look like a street beggar.

    Now wiseguys will ask “Ha what about other sports they are also headed by politicians and why don’t they succeed?”. The difference between BCCI & other bodies is that BCCI is private and most of the other sporting bodies are Soviet-style government bodies and are run by the devastating machinery that is the Government Bureaucracy. There’s a high chance that a politician will do good. It is in their self-interest to do so but it is not so for the bureaucrat.

    Genetics

    Believe it or not genetics play a heavy role in sporting ability and the Indian race is not blessed with best of the athletic genes. The most profound example of this is the 100m race. There are exactly 4 men who have broken the 10 second barrier that are not of West African descent. The standard argument against this line of thought is that how come Chinese are able to win so many medals. The Chinese win most of the medals in gymnastics and diving viz basically gymnastics in a pool. Historically, Chinese have had many opera houses which are excellent training stages for acrobats and martial arts. Many Kung Fu action stars like Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Jet Li etc who are all acrobatically athletic are products of these schools. The Chinese communist government tapped into this reservoir and used modern western methods to create a powerful tour de force.

    Lack of Sporting culture

    India lacks a sports culture. In the west kids play all sorts of organized sports regularly. Though things are slowly changing in India, we aren’t getting there quickly enough. Academics still dominate because its the easiest and, despite rising education costs, the cheapest and highest hit ratio of success.

    Many people casually say kids are forced by parents to study and unless that changes India will never win medals. This is a half-arsed argument which is made mostly by unmarried childless folks. The reality is that sports is a very expensive venture with an extremely short shelf life (average 3-4 years) and less than 1% of the competitors make it to the top to make a sustainable living and those who don’t make it will have wasted at least half a decade away from general white collar jobs that are on offer. It is already a merciless competition through sheer quantity if not quality and with a 5-6 year handicap it gets even harder to find employment.

    Despite the TV shows & advertisements repeatedly showing an aspiring upper middle class, India still is largely a lower middle class blue collar country. Our families just cannot cope with losing the young & strong next generation to failure and depression through the hit & miss world of sports instead of increasing the quality of their lives through the surer path of academics.

    Sports as a political tool sans Cricket

    The world evolved into USA vs USSR a few years after world war II and the Olympics became a giant pissing contest between the two powers. There were the two giant boycotts of 1980 & 1984 where many athletes who wasted 4 priceless years of their lives just because the politicians of the nations wanted to score brownie points.

    India are no strangers to the political boycott. The Indira Gandhi led govt refused to let the Indian tennis team to play the Davis Cup final vs Apartheid South Africa in 1974. This was an anomaly though. India has always failed to see beyond cricket to see sports as a political tool. The Chinese used Beijing 2008 to show how far they have come as a nation. Today they are dominant in almost every field. Every achievement in sport is seen as showing China as a superior powerful nation.

    India hardly use their (few) successes to score PR victories. This is not limited to sports. India fail to use our successes to score PR in any field. The Silicon Valley would not be a cradle of innovation had it not been for Indian engineers. Isn’t Sundar Pichai’s Google CEO analogous to an Indian tennis player winning the Wimbledon singles’ title? Not only do we not praise but we actively disown these great success stories. With this sort of inferiority complex we can never aspire to achieve greatness not only in sport but any field.

    Indians & Skill-based sports

    As mentioned earlier, India are genetically unsuited less suited for purely athleticism based sports like sprinting, long distance running, swimming, diving, gymnastics etc. It is highly unlikely India will produce a sub-10 second 100m runner in 10-15 years from today. Having said that India have had no problems in acquiring proficiency in skill based sports. Despite general apathy, lack of proper infrastructure & most of the players not even seeing an astroturf field until their late teens, India still produces highly skilled hockey players at international level.

    Netherlands, a country which is about as big as Haryana, has about 300 astroturf hockey stadia. India, the most successful nation ever, has just 30 astroturf stadia. Even a simple doubling of this number & giving U-16, U-12 teams access to these facilities will see instant uptick in results thanks to the greater repetitions from an earlier age.

    Even in racket based sports like tennis & badminton, India produced top class players like Ramanathan Krishnan, Vijay Amritraj, Leander Paes, Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand all of whom were top players in their disciplines. Almost all of their formative years were in the debilitating uber-socialist era of Indian bureaucracy.

    Don’t Put all your eggs in one basket(s)

    India has decent talent pool in a few sports and we must identify how our traditional sports can be used to translate those talents into their nearest equivalent of Olympic sports. Traditional Indian martial arts still exist in various forms. We must study how these traditional skills, that are second nature to the practitioners, can be translated to Olympic sports like fencing and judo. It is even possible to tap gymnasts from these village grounds given the amount of acrobatics that is required for a skilled fighter.

    We have had centres of wrestling colloquially for centuries. Remember that India’s first individual medal came in wrestling as early as 1952. Funding for wrestling must be increased multi-fold to create a much bigger pool of wrestlers to compete at the Olympics & world championships. Again our traditional style of wrestling must be codified and combined with modern diet & fitness techniques to get the best of both worlds. Tradition, more often than not, exists for a reason because it works!

    Shooting is another sport India must focus upon. The Indian army is one of the best trained armies in the world and we have a wealthy pool of talent to chose from to train. It is important to identify the men who had the best shooting records and the training provided to these men can lead to a high degree of sophistication in Olympic competitions.

    If India, through means private & public, concentrate on these sports i.e. archery(4), fencing(10), judo(14), wrestling(18) & shooting(15), we will compete for 159 total medals. With a thorough road map and exact targets at each step, even if India win 10% of the medals we will end up with 16 medals in an Olympics. We should also invite experts from countries that dominate medals in said sports i.e. Japanese Judo experts or South Korean archery experts to train our fledgling aspiring Olympians.

    Most Important factor of them all: Money

    Now comes the most important resource of them all: money. We must spare no expense for the training & dietary regimes for these athletes. Medical support is just as important. These athletes, especially the wrestlers & racket sportspeople, push themselves beyond the edge of what is humanly possible. It is inevitable that the occasional bend becomes a break. Proper surgery and rehab is not cheap. It is a very expensive affair but it is also most necessary.

    The value of a medal or a trophy is priceless. The Olympic prize money is a pittance compared to amount of time and effort that an Olympian puts in. There was news a few days back that Brazil had spent $14 billion for the world cup they hosted 2 years ago. Had they won their 6th world cup in Maracana the said $14 billion would have been worth less than a torn rag when compared to the priceless trophy that Thiago Silva would have lifted in front of their home crowd.

    Lastly, we must draw inspiration from whatever semi-success we had in the past and aim to better it. Dipa Karmakar is an inspiration to all gymnastic aspirants in India. She overcame injury, lack of facilities and official apathy to just qualify for the vault final. She was not even allowed to take a personal physio, a bare necessity that is taken for granted by the top nations, with her before the final jump. She overcame impossible odds to miss out on a bronze medal by a hair’s breadth. If she had even half the resources available to Simone Biles how well would she have done?

    This is an abridged version of a 3 part post on whitericevellasamy.wordpress.com. Parts i, ii, iii.

  • Why India fails at Olympics

    Why India fails at Olympics

    As expected Indian hopes are once again getting crushed at Rio Olympics. Reams of paper have been wasted on explaining why India performs so badly in sports. In the end, it boils down to two arguments:

    1. Nature (i.e. genes)
    2. Nurture (i.e. institutional infrastructure)

    It is the same argument which is usually evoked while talking about educational outcomes. The genetic buildup of student and style of teaching/facilities both matter for the educational outcome. But what makes sports at Olympics different than educational outcome is that in the first case it is only the “crème de la crème”, i.e. only the very best, which matter. So, the average genetic makeup, although important, is not the only reason for bad performance.

    A lot of Indians fall for the first argument, while it is the latter which matters equally. If genetics were the only reason for performance, then countries would not go up or down on the medal tally. Comparing Russia against China makes this point abundantly.

    Some quick points to notice here. Russians are slipping down the medal tally while Chinese have been on an upswing since their second debut in 1984. The number of Russian athletes participating at the Olympics has not gone down but they are winning fewer medals as well as gold medals. If this trend continues we would see further fall in Russian medal haul, which points towards deteriorating sporting facilities in Russia. This can become worse over time as Russia will lose key strategists and coaches over time if it does not perform well thereby losing historical advantage over time. China on the other hand is supposedly a poor country, with poor genetics but it is getting stronger year after year. Anyone who has gone to China can confirm the small size of an average Chinese. Even malnourished Indians look like giants in front of an average Chinese person. If it were just about genetics then China would have never made it to the top of the medal tally. So, what is working in favour of China?

    This brings us to the second important point which is population size. The above graph gives population per medal and so darker green areas mean that more medals are won per capita. What is interesting to note here is that both India and China are white, i.e. they both win few medals per capita although China wins a lot of medals while India wins almost none. China produces one Olympic medal for every 15 million people, while India takes 206 million. You can check more similar maps here. So technically speaking big population gives a big advantage not just to China but other decent performing countries with high population like in South America. So the genetic argument looks a little bit weak when you can choose from 15 million people like in case of China!

    So Indians can have a bad genetic makeup which is not suited for sports for the general population but it should not stop them from producing decent sportsmen who can win few medals at the Olympics. Now let’s look at some of the prominent Indian athletes to further understand the problem:

    Sushil Kumar: Sushil Kumar was born in a Hindu Jat family of Baprola village, near Najafgarh in South West Delhi. His father, Diwan Singh, was a DTC bus driver, while his mother, Kamla Devi, is a housewife.

    Vijender Singh: His father, Mahipal Singh Beniwal, is a bus driver with the Haryana Roadways, while his mother is a homemaker. His father drove extra buses for overtime pay so as to pay for Vijender and his elder brother Manoj’s education.

    Mary Kom: Kom was born in Kangathei, in Churachandpur district of Manipur in eastern India. Her parents, Mangte Tonpa Kom and Mangte Akham Kom, worked in jhum fields.

    These are just few examples to show the background of most of our athletes. Except the shooters like Abhinav Bindra and Gagan Narang, most come from very humble background. Sports is make or break for many of them and many give it up for lack of support from the government and sports agencies. Also, most of them start their career late and usually give up as soon as they land up some decent job. Olympics is not just about talent any more and need intensive training and proper nutrition. And given social apathy, it is surprising that India can churn out a few sportsmen.

    So unless GoI decides to focus on sports to increase medal tally in the future or rich Indians take up sports in big numbers, India will continue to see itself at the bottom of medal tally. In the meantime, India should thank its bus driver and farmer parents for showing immense courage to help support sporting dreams of their kids.

    Till then enjoy the Olympic spirit.

  • From fall of Olympics to Jallikattu ban

    Editorial illustration for From fall of Olympics to Jallikattu ban
    Editorial illustration for “From fall of Olympics to Jallikattu ban”.

    The Abrahamic war on Paganism has been perfected over the centuries and the recent ban on Jallikattu is a direct consequence of this old and perfected missionary tactic. One of the essential stages during the spread of Abrahamic religions over the world has been the destruction of paganism from Europe to Latin America to Africa. And the best way to kill paganism is to strike at its root by disconnecting the natives from their roots — turning sons against father, society and native religion. The cookbook of turning people against their forefathers has been refined over the centuries by these imperialistic religions. But how do you disconnect people from their roots?

    The best way to achieve this objective is to chop down on native social traditions ranging from festivals, feasts, sacrifice and every social activity which defines the local society. Sometimes this objective was achieved in an overt fashion as exemplified by Mohammed destroying the idols of Arabic pagan Gods on his return to Mecca. With this single masterstroke, Mohammed completely disconnected the Mecca residents from their traditional culture which revolved around their pagan deities. Without common identity, customs and rituals to bind them, the old pagan society crumbled under Islamic barbarity in Arabia. If the sword was not powerful enough to censor ritualism, other machinations were deployed to achieve this objective.

    But Islam only picked up these techniques later, much after Christianity had used them for several hundred years and was already a prominent religion. So it is important to look at the methods used by early Christians to destroy pagan societies and see whether the Jallikattu ban follows the old Church template. The only difference being that now western governments use secular institutions like NGOs and think-tanks to denounce native practices and de-link people from their traditions. Such societies then become easy fodder for proselytization attempts by the Church.

    The suppression of Olympic games by the Church

    The ancient Olympic games were the most important part of Greek identity but in 380 AD, when Emperor Theodosius I announced Christianity to be the official state religion of the Roman Empire, the Olympic games became the first victim of zealous Christian clergy. In 391 AD and 392 AD, Theodosius I further issued edicts to outlaw the pagan practices of sacrifice, libations, garlands, and divination throughout his territory. This would prove to be the final nail for the Olympics — celebrated in honour of Greek God Zeus — and other sports in their outwardly pagan forms. Finally in 426 AD, Emperor Theodosius II finished the work started by his grandfather and burned down the Temple of Zeus and other Olympia buildings including the great stadium of Olympia.

    The burning down of the Temple of Zeus was the last step in establishing the supremacy of the monotheistic Christian God. But as mentioned above, the work to discredit pagan beliefs began much earlier as the Church actively used state power to ban different pagan practices. In 392 AD, Theodosius prohibited circus games on Sunday so that people would not be distracted from Sunday mass. The gradual decline of Gladiatorial fights under Constantine I, Constantine II, and complete closure under Honorius in 404 AD also happened under the influence of the Christian council as Roman kings restricted their soldiers from participating in these events and decreased the frequency of these events.

    All these actions paved the way for removal of the statue of Zeus from Olympia. This statue was one of the primary attractions of the city and the Olympic games were discontinued soon after these events. No surprise that Olympia became a Christian town by the 5th century with its buildings falling into ruin or taken over by the Church.

    The accommodations for the athletes and guests were at this point no longer used for their original purpose. Blocks from the gymnasium gate and perhaps from the palaestra too, and statue bases from the nymphaion were reused in the church.

    — Sofie Remijsen, The End of Greek Athletics in Late Antiquity

    The template thus used by the Church was very simple — look down upon all native traditions and either ridicule them to stop them covertly, or use the power of the state and mob and suppress them overtly. A gripping account of the destruction of ancient pagan culture and along with it the scientific temper was the subject of the movie “Agora” released in 2009:

    [Embedded: Agora (2009) — trailer or clip on destruction of pagan culture]
    [Embedded: Agora (2009) — trailer or clip on destruction of pagan culture] — contextual restoration.

    But it was not all easy for the Church as the pagans did fight back for some time. There was a brief period between Constantine II and Valentinian where Julian the Apostate did his best to revive paganism by reviving games and festivals — but the poor fellow failed because the Church had become deeply entrenched in the Roman power structure and society by then. Paganism lost hold on Greek minds as they became victims of rational philosophy, escapist mystery cults and the reforming zeal of Christians who stamped out the pagan sacrifices, idolatry and rituals.

    The suppression of sports and rituals in India

    The targeting of Akali Nihangs and decline of Sikh martial traditions under the British Raj also followed the same template. Gatka, which was predominantly a battle art, was turned into performance art as the British hanged and imprisoned the Ustads and hunted down the Nihangs out of Punjab. This was done with such clinical precision that not only Sikhs forgot and gave up their traditional practices but also became one of the most loyal servants of the British.

    The British made other similar attempts and banned Ayudh Puja as well as most other martial arts traditions like Silambam and Kalaripayat. Although these decisions had the objective to protect British colonialism in India, one should not miss the cultural aspect — the British had a deep desire to “civilise” the local Satan worshippers.

    The recent fashion to rid Hinduism of its original pagan form while absorbing Hindu spirituality in the name of secularising Yoga, Advaita etc. should also be seen under this light. Once these philosophies are de-linked from their Hindu roots by banning the outward pagan rituals, the task of luring people into monotheistic creeds or hedonistic consumerism becomes much simpler.

    The forces behind these bans

    The current attempts to ban Jallikattu should be seen as a continuation of past attempts to suppress local traditions in pagan societies. The only thing that has changed is the players in the game. Instead of overt participation of the Church, now we have NGOs and other pressure groups who want to subvert local traditions. No surprise that in almost all cases, the customs and rituals under the scanner have an association with Hinduism — the last citadel of global paganism.

    Most Hindu traditions are local in nature and closely related with local social life. This makes them easy targets as it is difficult to rally support from other Hindus in case of suppression by the state. Given the past success of proselytization attempts post destruction and vilification of native pagan traditions, one should expect that these attempts will only increase in the future in India — sometimes under the garb of animal protection and other times to promote equality, gender or otherwise. The recent judgements against temple elephants, Dahi Handi during Mumbai Gokulashtami celebrations, or the Sabarimala and Shani Shingnapur worship traditions are the disjointed pieces of this puzzle that one needs to put together to understand the big picture.

    In this whole drama, the most worrying aspect is the fact that most of these decisions have come from the Supreme Court which has no mandate to interfere selectively and pass judgements against some local traditions while closing their eyes on other more reprehensible social practices. This probably gives a sense of infiltration of the deep state or current liberal memes in Indian judiciary. Also, the hurry shown by the SC to entertain such PILs, when many other important cases are pending, only leads to further distrust in the institution.

    To counter this propaganda — and given the hold of Marxist thought in popular parlance in India — there is an active need on the part of Hindus to thwart any such attempts against local traditions. Given the presence of social media, it is much easier to identify and target the hypocrisy of individuals who want to ban Jallikattu while enjoying a piece of steak for dinner. But it is not enough, as Hindus usually try to brush off the strength of the enemy by citing that they have survived this onslaught for more than 2000 years. A cursory look at the epitaphs of various pagan societies from around the world should be enough to ring an alarm bell that they are not special and many other civilizations have been destroyed using similar techniques. So every attempt to ban and ridicule local rituals and traditions, no matter how small, should be thwarted at every level of society.

    References:

    Christianity and the Roman Games — Richard F. Devoe

    The End of Greek Athletics in Late Antiquity — Sofie Remijsen

    The Fall of the Ancient Olympics: The Theodosian Code