The 2020 Tokyo Olympics have concluded. By far, every Indian can mutually agree that this was our best performance to date in Indian Olympic history. With a total of seven medals to India’s name and honor, it was not just the stories of the winning champions that were highlighted, but many overarching lessons came to light.
As a young millennial, this was the only Olympics I found myself tuning in everyday to view the results, during these last 14 days. I am not an athlete and I hardly have an interest in sports, but that itself speaks volumes about what this Olympics managed to do for many young Indians like me. It piqued our interest, it fed our curiosity, it resonated with our idea of patriotism. This Olympics was the first-of-its-kind to nurture hopes of medal possibilities and create history in some form.
With better media coverage given to every representing athlete and stories of their struggles filling the news space, it reminded me of my early teenage years when I had just begun taking a keen interest in cricket.
Stories of struggles and features of their ultimate triumph are the kind of headlines that media houses love to lap up. And why not? Fundamentally speaking, we are all struggling in our respective lives in a pandemic-driven world. When stories of people carving miracles out of their struggles are revealed- it gives hope, of a possible silver lining during these uncertain times.
This kind of coverage managed to do that. It provided a country that is obsessed with cricket to look further and beyond at newer sporting inspirations and aspiring sporting fields in the arena. The Olympic champions and representatives managed to, not only achieve unbelievable feats but also silence many armchair ponderers who would talk about India’s presentation at the Olympics with disdain. They deserve to be lauded and appreciated for all they have gone through to make it so far. 2021 became a slightly better year thanks to their contribution!
The Olympics was held amidst an ongoing pandemic where the celebrations were subdued in comparison to previous years. Yet, it ended up creating the biggest bang for Indians all over the world.
Looking at the bigger picture, here are my three key takeaways from India’s performance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics :
- Invest to reap rewards and break records.
Whether you want to accept it or not, the underlying message of the performance at the Tokyo Olympics was that you need to invest money in other sports. We have known it all along and in a sense, are guilty of not propagating that thought into desirable actions.
If talent has to rise and compete, money needs to be invested to scout for that talent, hone the talent, and refine that talent. Without investing money, there will be a dearth of the right kind of available opportunities. That scarcity can lead to a noticeable vacuum of talent not in tangent with time.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it’s a capitalistic world we live in right now. Without investing money, nothing is going to go far, grow or bring laurels- be it in sports or art.
An evidential example was the Indian hockey team. Both the men’s and women’s teams were able to compete and create history because of the backing of the Odisha government to provide them with facilities and proper coaching since 2018. That support resulted in the men’s hockey team winning the bronze medal after 41 years and the women’s team qualifying fourth ( an insurmountable feat that shocked everyone including their natives! )
Medals happen when money provides accessibility. Earlier, people from affluent backgrounds were more likely to make their dreams to compete in the Olympics come true. Talent that came from lesser affluent backgrounds always had to struggle their way up the sporting ladder. Excessively talented players from remote corners of the country wouldn’t consider taking up sports due to the lack of investment and guidance to channelize that talent for national and international competitions.
Listen to any current sportsperson’s story and it features the same underlying message: First, they struggled to get people to believe and provide them a chance. When they were given a chance, they struggled to get people to invest in them. When they found agencies willing to sign them up, they would train like there was no tomorrow. Because until they didn’t prove themselves, their dreams could be over within minutes. Family issues, societal pressures, injuries, health concerns all blur into the background because of the lack of concrete support that can end their sport careers on a whim.
Anyone born with a talent- either in sports or arts- will have the inner drive to prove themselves. It is a given. However, if that drive is not supported by strong guidance, financial patronage, and moral support, it is a loss of good talent that could have become great with time.
This Olympics was a reminder to back up the strong, sporting, non-cricket talents of our country. If the quantity of rewards has to increase, then qualitative training, guidance, counseling, medical assistance, and exposure have to be provided.
Public and private agencies, as well as associations, will need to optimize monetary resources for coaching and smoothen out the red-tapism , if they want more sporting glory and long-lasting legacies to prevail in years to come.
2. Women and Sports are no more mutually exclusive terms.
This feels personal. If 10-year- old me was watching this Olympics, the endless future possibilities would have triggered a different set of aspirations. To see your gender killing the game, breaking records, and achieving unexpected feats was the highlight of the Tokyo Olympics. Women kick a** and how. Every Indian woman who won a medal or almost won a medal at the Tokyo Olympics shattered a glass ceiling never done before. That was the beauty of their wins which made it even more inspiring as a woman watching them do it.
Saikom Mirabai Chanu won the silver medal in women’s 49kg weight-lifting on Day One of the Olympics- a first in Indian Olympic history.
P V Sindhu won the bronze medal in women’s single badminton becoming the only Indian female athlete to win multiple Olympic medals and the second Indian to win a medal twice in individual games at the Olympics. A distinction par excellence!
Lovlina Borgohain won the bronze medal in women’s welterweight boxing in her Olympic debut becoming the second female boxer to win at the Olympics after the veteran MC Mary Kom.
Aditi Ashok, who qualified fourth in women’s golf, went neck-to-neck in the fight for the medal with some of the best female golf players in the world.
The women’s hockey team qualified fourth and may have missed the medal, but the grit with which they performed right until the end was unparalleled. They don’t come from affluence, each one of them has had the hardest of struggles to overcome for the pursuit of their hockey dreams, yet they strived hard and put up a strong fight against the best of teams.
Passion, aggression, motivation, headstrong- words usually associated with sportsmen, especially in India – were now being unapologetically showcased by the women. It was no more the case of one woman or two women winning a medal or qualifying, it was a host of women doing it and making people sit up and take notice of that fact. Irrespective of whether they won or not, every single woman who competed at the Tokyo Olympics was out there to smash the patriarchy, as they worked towards their goal.
The bottom line of the sporting performances of our women was that women pack a punch and own their gender while playing the game. As a testimony to the basic nature of a woman- give her a chance and watch it multiply into glory.
As a woman, I felt pride surge inside me, watching all these sportswomen owning their sport and giving their best to the game. To have spent my teenage years wanting to engage in tough sports during Physical Education classes, only to be met with disapproving looks from other female classmates and teachers, to now seeing this 360-degree shift in that perception is such welcoming change. I hope their performances will inspire girls to take up sports, families to motivate their daughters sporting talents, and the push for more diverse female representation in sports.
There is no excuse for unfounded systemic biases when it comes to women in sports now. There is only room for more improvement!
3. Give exposure, not pressure.
To people like me who lost interest in sports while growing up, the media exposure that Olympics 2020 brought in, made many of us google about the different sports categories. Cricket is considered a religion in India. For people who hardly kept track of sports news or were hardly aware of other sports (home-grown or not), this Olympics was that eye-opener!
Bajrang Punia won the bronze medal in the men’s 65 kg wrestling match. Ravi Kumar Dahiya won the silver medal in the men’s 57 kg wrestling match, becoming the second Indian to win an Olympic silver medal. Both men ensured that India’s medal momentum in wrestling at the Olympics remained undefeated. Wrestling is one of the oldest home-grown sports of India and like hockey, it suffered from a lack of widespread exposure and media coverage. In recent years, with the medals pouring in from 2008 onwards and with films like Dangal and Sultan amongst others portraying the sport, Indians familiarized themselves with the technique of the sport.
Neeraj Chopra, the man who brought happy tears to Indians all over the world, won the prized gold medal in men’s javelin throw. The javelin throw is a rarely discussed and dissected sport in athletics and tracks unless one is part of the sporting community. It doesn’t help that it is majorly a solo game, so unlike hockey or cricket, it doesn’t affect communities in a way team sports tend to do, and unlike wrestling, it isn’t part of ancient India’s sporting culture. It took one Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal to make many netizens research the sport and expose youngsters to the possibilities of the game. Seeing an Indian competing in that sport, clinching the highest spot, and bringing the ultimate medal on the last day of the Olympics is the kind of miracle usually found in myths and legends. Neeraj Chopra, not only won the first athletics and tracks gold medal for Independent India and the second gold medal after 13 years but exposed a whole generation to a new sport that we can see ourselves competing in at the Olympics.
The bottom line is when media coverage and national interest are attending to unfamiliar sports, it creates space for a plethora of opportunities to flourish. Interest in these aforementioned games will take center stage because of the possibility of associated achievement and collective interest when representing the country globally.
However, while exposure is valuable, pressure is not. The problem with high achievements is that there will always be an unspoken future expectation to continue the momentum. In case that doesn’t happen, the wrath is childish, and at its worst -scary.
We have seen it happen in cricket. Being an overly-exposed game, the moment a batsmen or bowler doesn’t perform after being credited with laurels, we are quick to drag the cricketer and criticize them from every angle possible.
In the next Olympics, if these young excellent players do not outdo their current performance, there will be plenty of naysayers and trolls ready to attack and devalue them.
External pressure is likely to bring disappointment. Speaking as a performer, there is already a lot of internal pressure when somebody is called to compete/perform. The added external pressure is further internalized by the participant. Very few have trained their minds to handle that externalized pressure well. Most of the time, it gets overwhelming for an athlete or a performer that they buckle into that pressure when it wasn’t even their fault, to begin with.
Equitable Hype – neither put them on a pedestal when they win nor drag them down when they lose. Cheer for them- both- when the going is good and when the chips are down. That kind of national-level emotional intelligence will go a long way in ensuring the best mental spirit for sport competitors in any game.
You win some, you lose some..
Indians tend to have an achievement-obsessed mentality which, unknowingly, causes unnecessary complications.
When a prominent journalist passingly remarked that -despite this being India’s best Olympic performance in years, it could have been better- that was downright disappointing to hear. It was the stereotypical Southeast Asian mentality projecting out – ‘No matter how good you are, how much ever you do, how much ever you achieve- it isn’t enough.‘
I am not saying we shouldn’t aim for higher records. When potential is involved, having expectations is human nature. But greed is a sin. That person may have had good intentions behind their statement but sitting on your chair and commenting won’t make a difference! Unless you are personally involved in the sport or are part of the agencies facilitating a sportsperson – such statements only make you look silly.
Accomplishments are necessary to remind us to strive harder and reward the hard work gone into it. However, do not forget to laud the effort of those who equally struggled and put their best foot forward. Efforts need to be valued equally like rewards.
Myopic mentality harps in on accomplishment and forgets the effort. Yes, our memories might only remember the final achievement, but having a patronizing attitude towards effort is unhealthy.
Until an accomplishment is unlocked, it is the effort and the process that keeps the participant going. It is the necessary fallback support for an athlete or performer. That equilibrium needs to be understood instead of adding more salt to the wound.
Anyway, this was my two cents on the recently concluded 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The power of united prayers was evident in the Indian sporting performances. Previously, our players would attend the Olympics, compete and come back with hardly any coverage. This Olympics was the game-changing breath of fresh air that Indian sports needed.
August has always been special for India. Progressing India received its Independence, 75 years ago, during this month. August 2021 became that month when Indian sports received its independence from a looming colonial-imported game. May this newfound optimism take a good form in the upcoming years!
This post was originally written at thoughtsofki.com on 10 Aug 2021.
Missfithinker 