Agony in ecstasy

 

 

When a young 25–year old shooter with a gold medal around his neck watched with pride as the Indian tricolour unfurled in Beijing and the national anthem played, a few thousand miles south west of the Chinese capital, in the Emerald Isle, the Indian cricket team was hurtling towards a test series defeat against Sri Lanka. For those who like to read into these situations, the touch of irony is hard to miss. India gets its first ever individual Olympic gold medal while a much vaunted batting line-up fails to fire yet again in what is the nation’s de facto national sport.

It would be tempting to look at this as a kind of a ‘tipping point’ for other sports to grab mind-share and heart-share but alas, there is always a spanner lurking in the works when we discuss sport in India. 'Despite rather than because of the system’ is the phrase that sits apt in the case of Abhinav Singh Bindra’s hard earned and well deserved glory.

So, can this be the moment when sports administration in India is jolted out of apathetic slumber and Indians believe again as sports fans (not cricket fans)? "I sincerely hope that it changes how Olympic sports are viewed in India" Abhinav said (see interview on page 46), and like him, many would be hoping that his achievement holds the promise of a paradigm shift. "People from my native place, a remote village in Kerala, Uzhavoor, started distributing sweets and celebrated as if I had won an Olympic Gold," exclaims Sunny Thomas, the Indian National Shooting Coach and Vice President of the National Rifle Association of India (see exclusive column, page 48). But, facts first. Shooting is a special interest sport and needs a lot of financial backing for one to make it a career. Abhinav has been lucky to have been blessed with a father who has the dough to spare. The lack of facilities and shooting ranges has simply been replaced by training abroad (at his own cost), or at the air conditioned range in his own backyard. Abhinav’s father, AS Bindra, has worked tirelessly towards making his son's – and his own – Olympic dream come true. Not one to miss a media opportunity, Bindra senior has been quoted as saying, "My son has proved Singh is King". One also hears and reads that he has even planned an open-bus ride from Delhi airport to Chandigarh for junior. It’s hardly a model that’s scalable among the masses though! And that’s where the biggest bane lies. If India is to be drawn out of sporting complacency, a more collective effort is necessary. And lest we blow it out of proportion, let’s keep it in perspective that the collective talent in this year’s Olympic shooting team had made a medal a distinct possibility. Of course, the medal being gold has amplified the dramatic effect on the psyche of the country but then it may not be significant enough to change the mindset of a people who are essentially hooked on to a spectator sport. Like his countrymen, even Bindra is a ‘huge cricket fan’ because it is a spectacle that can be enjoyed on many levels. Most Olympic disciplines, however, are individual and not always the most spectacular. If it was a question of national image and pride, like China, we would also have instituted a rigorous sports training programme in our schools to breed world beaters. Obviously, it’s not. Just look at the way the administrators have mutated into dictators running a fiefdom on their whims. Associations routinely and brazenly practice nepotism in appointing officials and running events. Thus, we have Sania Mirza’s mother traveling to the Games with the tennis squad as a manager without any plausible expertise.

But the other upshot of the event is interesting – in spite of winning the World Championship in Zagreb in 2006, ‘no one really expected Abhinav to win considering his last outing at Athens in 2004’, as a TV anchor couldn’t stop exclaiming. Bindra had entered the final in third place at Athens, but shot poorly in the final and finished a disappointing seventh. He said after the event, "I won't be satisfied till I achieve my goal and that is to win an Olympic medal." The passion and zeal that he had for the sport made the difference. His friends reveal that he is even called 'Constant Comatose' as he continues to stay in a 'zone' from where he seldom emerges. He zealously guards his privacy and speaks so little that it even seems to suggest a nature that borders on arrogance. Maybe, there is a touch of that too, but when you win an Olympic gold medal, that could be glossed over. Now, more than ever, he understands that he could be more than just a winner – he could be an Ambassador for Indian shooting, perhaps even Indian sport. As a shooter he has immense patience. Shooters, they say, pull the trigger in that micro-second between their heart beats. Yet, the only time Bindra was almost impatient to get off the block was to answer questions during his meeting with the media. Time and again, he had to be halted to allow the interpreter translate the question into Chinese for the benefit of local journalists. The best bit came in almost at the end of the media interview after his gold medal. When the three medalists were asked what they did for a living, Bindra shot back almost immediately, "I have been punching holes on a black paper target for the last 10 years."

Perhaps all these years we have missed the woods for the trees. What is necessary is stoking the passion for the sport. "Keeping the training and coaching aside, what makes a winner in this sport is determination and mental make-up. All our youngsters need is focus and then, you bet, we can win gold after gold" asserts Shakun Bhugra, Shooting Coach at the Sports Authority of India who had predicted that India would win a gold medal in shooting at Beijing. Sadly, that is not the core competence of our sporting bodies which are forever fixated with the bottom line. Abhinav himself has been supported by the Mittal Champions Trust, funded by Lakshmi Mittal, the global steel boss. "Little or no support came from the government" laments his mother, Babli Bindra (see exclusive story, page 44). Bindra’s story can serve as an inspirational anecdote but not as the model solution. Continues Bhugra "In India, awareness is created only for popular sports and it is about time that the government should start providing facilities for sports like shooting, gymnastics, boxing, etc., in schools and colleges." If we want our national identity to be defined by what position we end up on the Olympics medals tally, we better put an organised movement into place. Fast!