The Olympics, India & Drugs
Really happy that we could get some
MEDALS, obviously.
Sporting events are truly a mind-boggling manifestation of human intelligence. To be able to channelize the power in your physical and mental nexus to achieve precise and explosive outcomes is nothing short of divine.
Divinity, which we as a nation have disrespected by lopsided funding and corruption.
We are not alien to the trials and tribulations Indian sportspersons are subject to. From ailing infrastructure and training facilities to dismal payscales to the disapproval and the wrath and unsupportive nature of Indian parents, well, most of them.
I was in class 8 when I got my first opportunity to play basketball outside the city. I wasn’t the best but I firmly believe if I trained I could be really good at it. Playing it would make me very happy and I was thrilled to have gotten the opportunity.
Did I go? Wait. Was I allowed to go? No.
It was a battle I didn’t fight.
Every time I see Indian athletes doing well, my amygdala glows thinking about the time that I could’ve made that choice. I wish I pursued my interest. I wish I put in that work. I wish I fought the battle. I wish I took that risk.
I didn’t.
But I am so glad that you did.
Your achievements are fitting replies to parents who refused and actively swayed their children from pursuing their passions. I am glad you’re proving to them that people who believe in their passion make it.
During the course of the Olympics, we all had our share of emotional rollercoasters.
The emotional roller coaster is also pretty inexplicable considering most of us have nothing to win or lose in these events, but we have a point(s) to prove.
Point 1 being, just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it will never happen. India has never won a medal in athletics — it happened but it is so much harder to achieve when you not only have to get better at the game but fight the system on a daily basis.
Point 2 being, once achieved everyone wants to be a party to the player’s victory but very few have the character to stick around for the player’s loss or the number of times this person has gotten hurt/missed exams/had a bad day.
Reminds me of the time when effigies of the Indian cricket team were burnt back in 2007 as a reaction to the World Cup defeat.
The system is highly disabling — screw enabling. The system is designed to provide for nothing whilst expecting everything.
Our inadequacies may have pushed many athletes to take a different route towards getting medals
Speaking of performance enablers, did you know?
While India may have ranked forty-eighth in the Tokyo Olympics, it ranks third (Russia and Kenya are first and second respectively) in terms of the number of athletes banned from athletics for doping violations.
Russia was banned from participating in the Olympics after a widespread state-sponsored doping racket was uncovered in 2016 (which is why they went by Russian Olympic Committee (ROC)) and it will not be a surprise if a similar scandal (may or may not be state-sponsored because the state will actually have to give a damn about sporting laurels to organize this illicit consumption) is unearthed in India as well. After all, there is no real control over doping drugs distribution in India.
But
What is the government’s interest in these Olympic rankings?
Here’s an excerpt from The Economist:
This dominance of the Olympic games may appear unassailable, but during the cold war, America vied with the Soviet Union for supremacy. Between 1952 and 1992 the Soviet Union beat America in six of the nine games in which the two countries went head-to-head (newly-independent Soviet states competed as a single team in 1992). On paper, it should not have been much of a match: although the USSR’s population was a sixth larger than America’s, estimates of its economic output put its GDP at one-quarter that of its rival. But athletes from the USSR and other Eastern bloc countries benefited from a vast allocation of resources to sports and state-sponsored doping programmes.
China’s increasing dominance in the games was followed by its rising economic clout. Since 2000 the country has not placed lower than third.
What does that say about India? More on that later.
The fun & games may have been happening in Tokyo but the real players are in Washington & Beijing.
