ENDING ON A HIGH NOTE
REALITY CHECK While the high of Asian Games must be celebrated, athletes will do good to have their feet on ground as they eye Tokyo 2020
The Indian contingent during the closing ceremony of the 18th Asian Games 2018 in Jakarta on Sunday.
JAKARTA:As the 18th edition of the Asian Games concluded here on Sunday there would have been many emotional goodbyes said with the promise that they would meet again four years later with renewed energy and vigour to battle for supremacy again.
Speaking of supremacy, China once again had no aggressor in sight, winning 132 gold, 92 silver and 65 bronze medals.
As India embark on a fresh competition cycle with the next Olympic Games in Tokyo two years away, athletes should take a leaf out of China’s book, where a silver medal is nothing to be proud of.
The Asian Games at Jakarta and Palembang might have brought cheers on the faces of a billion and more Indians as the country surpassed its best ever haul in the continental games, but the real ‘shift’ actually happened in the mindset of athletes, who started believing that they could beat the best; the finest examples being Swapna Barman, the daughter of a bedridden rickshaw driver, who won the heptathlon gold, and Amit Phangal — the pint-sized light flyweight boxer whose parents live in penury — who cared little for the reputation of his Olympic champion rival, punching his way to gold.
But there would be thousands more Swapnas and Amits whose dreams never saw the light of the day because of the inadequacies in the scouting mechanism, lack of infrastructure in remote areas, inaccessibility to equipment, among other things.
Government-initiated programmes such as the Target Olympic Podium scheme (TOPs) have given athletes the liberty to plan their own regimen. Athletes, hitherto unknown to the world, are holding centrestage in sports like shooting, rowing and athletics, not just because they had the desire to pick up a sport but because they got the government support at the right time.
Four years back, it was unthinkable of a 16-year-old to win gold at the Asian Games, but today the likes of Saurabh Chaud- hary (air pistol) or the youngest of them all, 15-year-old Shardul Vihan in double trap, are reaping the fruits of a robust youth programme in shooting and the relaxation on import of arms and ammunition to young shooters.
Jaspal Rana, who heads the junior shooting programme puts it succinctly, “Now India has backups, which were not there in our times. Today, if one shooter has an off day, the other is ready to fire.”
“Shooting is one sport where India can hope for not just one but multiple medals at the Tokyo Games,” says senior shotgun coach, Mansher Singh, adding, “the youngsters are carefree today, they play to win; that gives them a high.”
But India could not hold on to traditional bastions. Had those hockey and kabaddi gold medals not ‘slipped away’, India would have been sitting pretty on 19 gold. A gold, perhaps, in women’s team squash could have swelled India’s gold tally to 20, pitchforking it to sixth position from the current eighth.
Unfortunately, the faction-ridden kabaddi federation didn’t see it coming. During the Incheon Asian Games, when the Iranian kabaddi teams lost in the final, the players were inconsolable. But in Jakarta, they had come to beat India, no questions asked.
Former hockey player and son of the legendary Dhyan Chand was so disheartened with the Indian men’s hockey team’s loss in the semi-finals to Malaysia that he said, “I was expecting them to win gold but probably it was a case of expecting too much. Going into the World Cup, we need to plan better. There is no scope for complacency.”
For him, winning 15-16 gold in a country of more than a billion is nothing to rave about. “Winning 15-16 gold is not a big achievement for a country of more than one billion people. We should have won 40-50 gold medals,” said Ashok Kumar.
The time for stock-taking is now — to clean the mess once for all, so that Indian athletes can have the freedom to perform and flourish.