It takes a country to raise a successful Olympian

India's Olympic performance analyzed, highlighting the struggle for medals and the challenges faced by athletes and officials.

Now that the celebrations are done and the over-the-top reporting of the Olympics is behind us, we can say what we have been hesitating to: India disappointed. And we should all take some of the blame.

Participation was the Olympic creed – and for years we participated, with little hope of a medal but a bright possibility of getting free railway passes upon return to India. Our ambitions were limited, and so was our medals tally. 

Somewhere along the line, the emphasis at the Olympic Games themselves moved on from mere participation. One of the slogans at Paris was: this is where champions are made and legends are born. Participation was passe’, from the last century. Now it’s about winning. And that’s a slogan India have been struggling with. Two individual gold medals in this century is fantastic considering what went before, but that’s far fewer than a top swimmer or athlete wins at a single Olympics.

There are two ways of looking at our medal ‘haul’ in Paris. For those who came of age in the 1980s, a period when we worshipped fourth-placed finishers and semifinalists because that’s where our best athletes finished, a bronze in any sport is a great leap. K.D. Jadhav won a wrestling bronze in 1952, Milkha Singh and P.T. Usha finished fourth in the 400m and the 400m hurdles respectively. 

Between 1980 and 1996 (another bronze – Leander Paes in tennis), India had no medals. Since then, we have ‘medalled’ (the verbification of a noun is an Olympic achievement, too) at every Games. 

The other way of looking at the six bronze medals this year is to marvel at our celebrations at finishing 71st in the medal winners list, behind Botswana, Hong Kong, Tunisia, St Lucia, Uganda, and Pakistan. The land-locked Botswana is mostly the Kalahari desert and has a population of around two and a half million. It became independent in 1966, nearly two decades after India did.

Vinesh Phogat’s disqualification will remain India’s story in Paris. And how quickly did it become a political hot potato back home! For Phogat, it must have been like a death in the family, the loss of a medal, given all that she had gone through in India. Yet, did she have professional counselling, so important for athletes? Or was she left on her own to sort out things for herself?