THE
MEDAL’S IN THE DETAILS
Behind
India’s London success are three non-profits that do the dirty work while
players focus on going for gold
Viren Rasquinha, former India hockey captain and Olympian, can barely find standing room on the London underground. He is heading to watch MC Mary Kom’s bout against Britain’s eventual gold medallist Nicola Adams. And travelling with him is Kom’s coach Charles Atkinson, the Englishman who was denied an accreditation to be by the pugilist’s side.
As we are bundled out at Custom House, the tube station closest to the Excel Arena in East London, Rasquinha bursts out laughing: “Feels just like a Virar fast.”
Those who know Rasquinha will vouch for the fact that he’s generally a funny guy, but there are more reasons than one for the smile that’s plastered on his face. To be accurate, there are four reasons.
All of India’s medallists at London 2012 — Gagan Narang, Vijay Kumar, Saina Nehwal and Mary Kom — are supported by Olympic Gold Quest (OGC), the non-profit started by Prakash Padukone and Geet Sethi, to promote sports in India. Rasquinha is its CEO.
The medals are proof that there is merit in this silent movement, one that is aimed not at changing the system, but a mindset that says Indians aren’t good enough to compete at the highest level.
So how much of the credit for the haul — India’s best numerically in Olympic history — should go to OGQ? “We can’t take credit for what they’ve achieved, obviously,” Rasquinha says, “but we can say that we were part of that winning formula.”
The formula itself is simple: let the athletes focus on the job at hand; we take care of everything else.
Mary Kom’s coach wants to watch her semi-final bout? Instead of having the athlete run around begging officials for passes, which happens more often in Indian sport than you’d like to believe, Rasquinha organises for him to watch on a spectator ticket.
Back home, his daily schedule is riddled with trying to find the right inventory and sports equipment, getting lastminute visa appointments for athletes travelling abroad on short notice or for foreign coaches who need to come to India, and poring over a never-ending stream of medical reports.
OGQ isn’t the only non-government body backing Indian Olympians in London. There’s also the Mittal Champions Trust (MCT), formed back in 2004 after Laxmi Nivas Mittal, chairman of the world’s largest steel-making company, was upset after he saw a handful of Indian athletes competing at the Athens Olympics.
He backed former national tennis champ and Asian Games silver medallist Manisha Malhotra’s idea to set up an organisation that looks after the best talent in India, talent that usually winds up destroyed in India’s unending red tape. She is now CEO of MCT.
Here in London, like Rasquinha, Malhotra and her team have been working overtime since day one. In the run up to the Games, she had to help discus thrower Seema Antil get a place to stay and train — the Athletics Federation of India had called her early to England, but hadn’t bothered to provide her with her accreditation to enter the Games Village.
The Archery Federation did not allow the physiotherapist to travel with the archers. Malhotra had to call them outside the Village gates, where they were treated by the side of the road.
When Antil wanted a ticket for her personal coach, so he could sit at the venue and watch his ward, an Indian Olympic Association official asked Malhotra to shell out 300 pounds.
Today, the MCT has a US$10million corpus. This year alone, they pumped in around Rs 8 crore into Olympic preparations. At these Games, they are representing 13 athletes, with OGQ taking care of similar numbers. That’s over two dozen out of a contingent of 81 — 26 out of 66 if you leave aside the 15-member hockey team.
Apart from OGQ and MCT, there’s a third non-profit working behind the scenes at these Olympics. Lakshya, started by chess player Abhijit Kunte and his friends, is headquartered in Pune, and among the players on its roster are boxer Jai Bhagwan, shooter Rahi Sanorbhat and the badminton doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa.
Lakshya’s focus, however, remains at the grassroot level, and they have signed a string of junior athletes in shooting and tennis among other sports. While MCT too has scouts who identify and sign up young talent, Rasquinha believes established athletes need as much nurturing in this country.
The theory is this: when the time came for the athlete to take his or her shot at gold, any resulting failure could only be attributed to the fact that it wasn’t their day; not because they did not have the right amount of training, not because they had other things on their minds.
The cynics will ask how four medals count as a revolution. It’s just one more than India won at Beijing, and no one this time has matched Abhinav Bindra’s gold. The real India story of these Games, however, lies in how many more got close.
“I am a little sad that none of my athletes won a medal,” Malhotra says, “but they gave it their best. Some lost in the last round of shooting. Some of my boxers, I felt, won but were not awarded the points they deserve. Some lost due to inexperience. I am disappointed at the archers’ performance. Right now, we have to go back and see what went wrong, but anyway, I’m proud of all of them.”
For Rasquinha and OGQ, the disappointment — if any — lies in the colour of the medals. “We know how tough it is to win an Olympic medal and they have shown that they are true champions with even a bronze or silver,” Rasquinha says. “We all dream of gold but the effort to win any medal here is phenomenal.”
Both Rasquinha and Malhotra are quick to bust the myth that the sports ministry does nothing. They are equally quick to point fingers at the apathy displayed by the sports federations, which nullify any good the ministry tries to do.
“What we need right now is more professionalism from the federations. I think the sports ministry has shown immense support to the athletes this year. Ajay Maken is probably the best sports minister India has had. But the federations still behave like they are in the dark ages,” Rasquinha says. “We need more out of them if things are to improve further.”
The sports ministry has spent Rs 200 crore on Operation Excellence London 2012 (OPEX) and, through the National Sports Development Fund, it has made money available to finance individual athletes towards hiring of foreign coaches or setting up training bases abroad.
Bodies like the OGQ and MCT are tiny in comparison, and without liberal government spending, it would be impossible to get certain tasks accomplished. “The government can’t do it alone,” Malhotra says. “Our federations need to change if the state of sports is to improve. There are some that are doing a good job, and they should get a pat on the back, but there are several that need to review themselves. The ministry needs to intervene here. These Olympics have shown that in India right now, you need organisations like ours to help the athletes.” With the curtains set to come down on the London Games tonight, OGQ and MCT are already shifting focus to Rio 2016. New programmes are in place, fresh talent has been identified and sights have been set on improving on the four medals India won. And once Rio comes along, they’ll be organising tickets for non-accredited coaches, booking hotels for athletes left in the lurch, plugging holes of various sizes created by sports federations so that the athletes can focus on their job — going for gold.
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