Why I admire India’s 2020 Olympic Performance
By Anil Nayar*
A few weeks ago, while the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were underway, I chatted with fellow sports enthusiasts - managers and business owners in India as well as Indians in the U.S. and U.K. Many of them were dismayed by India’s performance – just seven medals, including one gold, for a country of 1.3 billion people?
Yes, since 1900, India has a total of only 35 medals; winning one, or no medal, in most Olympic meets. In contrast, Brazil, another large, emerging economy with one sixth of India’s population, won 21 medals in the 2020 Olympics alone.
Yet, I share the excitement of many other Indians over the seven medals India won in Tokyo. So, why am I optimistic, like the Janata, or masses, in India, in contrast to my fellow Indian professionals?
My enthusiasm comes from remarks made by the Indian winners in Tokyo as well as from recent, positive changes in Indian sports: a new generation of ambitious, hungrier sports figures; more opportunities for lucrative financial rewards for the winners; the inspiration and support from earlier champions; and a far more professional selection and training process.
“Gaad diya Papa lath,” - “I have left a mark.” - Neeraj Chopra told his father in a phone conversation after he won the javelin contest last month, becoming India’s first Olympics gold medalist in athletics.
Chopra, 23, (in photo) is from Chandra, a village in Haryana state, near New Delhi. He is a subedar – barely above the lowest level recruit - in the Indian Army. Up until a decade or so ago, most Indian Olympic contestants came from urban upper-or-middle class families. Now, their background is similar to that of Chopra.
Mirabai Chanu is 4’ 11” tall, weighs 108 lbs and works for the Indian Railways, which is run by the government. She is employed at the Lumding Railway Division in Assam state.
Last month in Tokyo, she won a silver medal in the 49 kg weight lifting category. After her victory, she praised the truck drivers who, at 6 a.m., give her a free ride to her training site, which is 14 miles from her home. She also thanked her mother, and Vijay Sharma, her coach.
Manpreet Singh, captain of the bronze medal-winning Indian field hockey team, is the son of a farm laborer from Mithapur village in Punjab state. He said his dream is “to win big for India” and his goal is to “inspire youngsters to play a sport, any sport.”
Like Chopra, Chanu and Singh, most Indians, competing in Tokyo, were from Jhansal, Jodhkhan, Khudun, Sirsa, Shahbad, Lalremsiami, Zira and other villages and small towns. Few in the world, or even in India, will recognize these names.
And Manpreet Singh’s net worth is estimated to be more than $3 million, a sizeable fortune in India, all gained through his success in hockey. The impact of major financial rewards for Singh and the other key hockey players became evident in Tokyo. India won an Olympic medal in the game after a gap of 41 years. At one time, Indian teams dominated the game, winning gold medals at every Olympics from 1948 to 1964, except for a silver medal in 1960.
P.V. Sindhu’s net worth is estimated to be $5 million, earned through endorsing consumer products, prize money and other fees and awards. She won the bronze medal in women’s badminton in Tokyo.
Sindhu’s coach is Park Tae-Sang, a South Korean. Neeraj Chopra’s coach is Klaus Bartonietz, to whom he gave credit after winning the javelin gold. The presence of these foreign coaches show that Indian sports officials realize the value of hiring the best coaches, whether foreign or local, in order to win.
Sindhu also had the advantage of good facilities. She trained at the Gopichand Badminton Academy, a center of sports excellence in Hyderabad, where she was born. And before the Olympics, she practiced at the Gachibowli Indoor stadium in the city, to get used to playing in arenas without crowds – given the COVID-19 restrictions in Tokyo.
Neeraj Chopra also thanked Abhinav Bindra for showing him that a gold medal was in his reach. In 2008, Bindra won the 10-meter air rifling Olympic gold medal. Like Chopra, those in the Indian Olympics team were inspired by the sports success of other Indians from economic and social backgrounds similar to their own. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, for instance, a tribal who grew up in Ranchi, Jharkhand state, led India to several wins in cricket.
Six-time world boxing champion M.C. Mary Kom was born in Kangathei village in Manipur state. She lost in the round of 16 at the 2020 Olympics. Her teammate Sarita Devi, a former World champion, also lost.
Yet they are both pioneers, being among the first generation of Indian women boxers. More important, they are unlike the many successful athletes who talk of “giving back” but do little. In 2006, they set up the Mary Kom Regional Boxing Foundation which also runs an academy in Imphal. The academy provides free training to boys and girls who cannot afford to buy the gloves and helmets and pay for the gym fees. Not surprisingly, Kom and Devi have made Manipur into a magnet for boxers in India.
But for India to produce more Olympic medal-winners, the modest recent improvements in selection, coaching and financial rewards need to be enhanced. As the success of Sindhu illustrates, more sports academies need to be set up by companies, business owners and philanthropists, in collaboration with sports associations and government agencies. They will provide a space for India’s top sports talent to challenge, compete and learn from each other and from foreigners as well as train under the best coaches in the world.
The Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad was founded in 2008 by Pullela Gopichand to produce future world champions. In addition to Sindhu, the academy has trained Saina Nehwal, Kidambi Srikanth, Parupalli Kashyap, H.S Prannoy and Gurusai Dutt, all World ranked badminton players. Gopichand, 47, won the all England Open men’s badminton crown in 2001. He is the chief coach of India’s badminton teams and helped both Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu to their Olympic medals.
Imagine if Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, Ajay Banga, former CEO of MasterCard, or Vinod Khosla, billionaire venture capitalist, or any of the other successful Indians in the U.S. were to fund sports academies in India and hire the best coaches to run them? They would create the sports equivalent of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM).
It would be one way for them to give back to India, where they got their life-changing, world-renowned education at the IITs and IIMs for about 2% of the costs at the top colleges in America. For this academic year, the annual total for fees, residence, meals and other costs at an IIT is Rs. 124, 450, $ 1,700, while for an undergraduate at Stanford University it is $81,000.
Yet, even if Nadella, Khosla or other successful Indians in the U.S. do not write checks to set up sports academies in India, I will remain patiently optimistic about India winning more medals at future Olympics. As Sunil Gavaskar, one of India’s greatest cricketers said, while fighting off tears, “The way Mirabai Chanu lifted those weights (at the Tokyo Olympics to win a silver medal) and the happiness which was there on her face when she put them down was incredible to see.”
*Anil Nayar has won 28 national squash titles around the world, including at the collegiate, junior and senior levels. Based in Miami, U.S., in 2018, he was inducted into the U.S. Squash Hall of Fame. He serves on the board of Khelshala, a philanthropy that provides education and sports training to children from poor families in Chandigarh, India. In 2020, Lucky—Anil Nayar’s Story: A Portrait of a Legendary Squash Champion, was published. In 1969, he earned an AB in economics from Harvard University, where he was captain of the squash team. He finished high school from the Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai.