Only if its athletes can meet Olympics standards but hosting the Games will boost country’s tourism, infrastructure and inculcate a sense of pride and unity among Indians
K P S Gill
President, Indian Hockey Federation
Olympics standards for sports are way higher than those for the Commonwealth Games. India’s standards in sports are yet to match that level
India should not bid for the Olympic games just yet. Our athletes are not up to the standard required for a world-class sporting event like the Olympics. We only have shooters like Abhinav Bindra and Raghavendra Rathore. Heena Sidhu won a silver and Samaresh Jung a bronze. Having won the women’s 10-metre air pistol pairs event, Sidhu won her second medal in the form of a silver when she scored 481.6 and finished behind Malaysia’s Chin Bibiana NG Pei (481.9) in the singles 10-metre air pistol for women.
Then there is Saina Nehwal in badminton. Achanta Sharath Kamal and former national champion Subhajit Saha won a gold in men’s doubles table tennis by overcoming Singapore’s Gao Ning and Yang Zi 3-2. Paramjeet Samota, Mayengbam Suranjoy Singh and Manoj Kumar brought some cheer back in the Indian boxing camp, winning gold medals in their respective categories. But remember, Suranjoy Singh didn’t have to move a muscle because his opponent pulled out of the 52-kg flyweight event final to hand Suranjoy his first Commonwealth Games gold. Kenyan Benson Njangiru pulled out of the event due to injury.
The main thing is that India doesn’t have a strong athletics team and it will take a long time till the country reaches that stage. There is not a single athlete who can compete and win Olympics in India. Consider what we got by way of athletics. The Indian women’s 4x400-metre relay team added a gold. The 1,600-metre relay squad of Manjeet Kaur, Sini Jose, Chidananda Ashwini and Mandeep Kaur crossed the line first in three minutes, 27.77 seconds to give India its 32nd gold medal at the Games. The Olympic record for this event in Beijing was three minutes, 18.55 seconds. And the men’s and women’s 4x100-metre relay teams, triple jumper Renjith Maheshwary and javelin thrower Kashinath Naik added only a bronze each.
If India wants to reach Olympic standards, serious work needs to be taken up. Even then, it will take the country 10 years to be in a position to organise these Games. China is a good example. For a number of years, China stepped out of the Olympics and when it re-entered, it did so with a bang. India should follow this example make its debut in organising the Olympics only when it is capable of delivering on the sports performance front.
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When we organised the Asian Games, we were winners in almost each and every event. I don’t think in the present situation I can say with confidence that we stand in a very good position in Asia.
As far as ending up in the second position in the Delhi Commonwealth Games goes, that is a lot of media hype. We should not revel too much in this achievement. Most of the foreign athletes did not attend the event in the first place. Take the men’s 100-metre sprint, the premier event of any multi-sport Games. Look at the Commonwealth rankings — not the world rankings — for 2010 and you will find that, for one reason or another, the 11 top-ranked sprinters were all missing from the competition. In the women’s version of this, only one of the top 10 runners made it to Delhi.
Had these athletes come, India would not have had the same medal tally. It would have been better if India had matched England’s overall tally, which stood at 142 medals against India’s 101. Last time, India had come fourth with 22 gold medals in a total of 50 while in 2002 the count was 69 with a gold tally of 30.
It is true that the Commonwealth Games have drawn plenty of flak for the corruption and delay in the work. However, that is not the core reason for India to stay away from bidding for the Olympics. It is always possible to find honest men who can take responsibility for organising the event in a transparent manner. The point is that the Olympics standards are way higher than those for the Commonwealth Games. Our standards in sports are yet to match that level. If we are serious, we should commit to developing a strong athletics contingent before going ahead with the bidding. As hosts, it would not look very good to see ourselves ending up last. As of now, however, we are a good ten years away from training our athletes to put up a great show at the Olympics.
As told to Ruchika Chitravanshi
Ayaz Memon
Sports journalist
The path to making a bid for the Olympics from here becomes much easier and infinitely less expensive — almost 70% of the infrastructure to host a mega-event of this magnitude is in place
It might seem imprudent in the extreme to make a pitch for India to bid for the Olympics even as several competent authorities, including the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, probe the alleged corruption in the recently-concluded Commonwealth Games. But I’ll brave the scorn of critics and cynics.
In my view, inquiring into the shenanigans related to the CWG and aspiring to host the Olympics are two entirely different issues: one has to do with probity in public life, the other is about aiming to make India a sporting nation. In themselves, these are vital matters and if both can work in conjunction, it is a win-win situation like none other.
Though the experience of creating infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games shows the need for proper audit and governance of public expenditure, the heady success of the Games per se — both in terms of public approval and medals won — reveals that India’s quest for excellence in sports has got a fillip. From here to the Olympics is a logical extension, therefore, of this ambition.
I don’t buy the argument of “spoilers” like Mani Shankar Aiyar that the Commonwealth Games were a waste of resources that could have been put to better use in an underdeveloped country. That is puerile logic, half aimed at rivals within his own political party and the other half to please a constituency that believes India is — and must continue — in the medieval age, apologetic about every new aspect of progress.
There were undeniably gross errors of omission and commission leading up to the Commonwealth Games. But the wastage was the result of administrative greed and political apathy, not because this sporting event was unwarranted.
Instead, I would agree with Azim Premji’s contention that had these Games been held in, say, Bihar, India could possibly have had another developed state. The development of Delhi, as the head honcho of Wipro has rightly pointed out, was not an imperative: the same money spent in a place that badly needs infrastructure et al would have killed two birds with one stone.
Be that as it may, the path to making a bid for the Olympics from here becomes that much easier and infinitely less expensive, although the venue might still have to be Delhi. Almost 70 per cent of the infrastructure to host a mega-event of this magnitude is complete. Assuming the several indoor and outdoor stadia won’t suffer a catastrophic collapse in the next few years, the increase in cost would be incremental.
Of course bidding for the Olympics does not come cheap. For instance, despite Barack Obama lobbying and a budget of more than $100 million in the bidding process, Chicago lost out to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympic Games. It is reasonable to expect an escalation of 50-60 per cent in “bidding money” for future Games.
This, plus the spend on the remaining infrastructure to host the Olympics, will add up to a whopping amount, yet not daunting enough if the economic growth and aspiration of a people can measure up, as India’s current run seems to suggest.
Creating fresh infrastructure and amenities is a big stimulus to the economy. Apart from creating national assets for posterity, this can generate thousands of jobs in diverse sectors at a pace that is otherwise unlikely. Obviously there is the need to ensure that the infrastructure is put to proper use after the event and not left to rot, but this has become increasingly viable with public-private partnership and new-technology-enabled multi-purpose stadia.
Tourism is the other big gainer. For instance, after the Athens Olympics in 2004, overseas visitors to Greece increased by over 13 per cent the following year because of the awareness generated. During the Sydney Games in 2000, Australia had 1.6 million additional visitors who spent more than $4.7 billion.
Perhaps the most important benefit of hosting the Olympics is the sense of pride and unity that it can create in the country, a glimpse of which we had got even during the much-maligned Commonwealth Games.
In a sense, this becomes an announcement of a country as a major player on the global platform in areas far removed from just sport. India’s time too has come, though I must build in the caveat that if we are as blase and self-seeking as during the CWG, this could just as easily boomerang.