How Odisha is on a roll, carving a new sporty identity for itself
Bhubaneswar, used to its afternoon siestas, a languorous lifestyle, was slowly being nudged into the realisation that a city with over 500 shrines and sanctums could be turning into a Sports City
Just before 3pm, the sky growled towards the East. It was a surreal spectacle. Towards the West, the sky was blue, like the waters of Bora Bora, French Polynesia. In the East, it was dark. Hellish dark. Like the aliens finally coming home to roost. Stuck in the middle was The Kalinga Stadium, a yawning, shallow well-like structure that at times resembles Rome’s Colosseum. At that moment, The Kalinga was Bhubaneswar’s heartbeat. It was still a few hours to go for the second day of the 22nd Asian Athletics at the Stadium, an event that had landed in the lap of Odisha’s capital, as Ranchi pulled out at the last minute. In three months, Bhubaneswar put things together, like a bunch of kids fired up with the enthusiasm of building a Lego city.
July is a bad month. It’s muggy, sultry and sweat pours down human bodies like water leaking off ageing, cracked pipes. But the growl towards the East had everyone smiling. Monsoons don’t roll in before the first week of August and as the wind picked up, so did the smiles. The rain was still a good hour away. The forbidding, dark clouds were swallowing blue skies. Still, nobody was bothered. If they earlier strolled in past the police scanners, now they almost jogged, trying to reach the safety of the stadium before the rains drenched the fans. An hour later, the rains hit The Kalinga — big large drops rapidly pooled on the newly laid tartan track and became puddles. Nirmala Sheoran won gold in the women’s 400M, Mohammed Anas in the men’s. As the rains lashed away, PU Chitra clinched the women’s 1500M and Ajay Kumar Saroj won a gold medal in the men’s 1500M. Amidst the thunder, rains, the cheering crowds watching an elite Track and Field Meet, the city, Bhubaneswar, usually ponderous, used to its afternoon siestas, a languorous lifestyle, was slowly being nudged into the realisation that a city with over 500 shrines and sanctums could be turning into a Sports City.
Earlier, nestled by the side of the Mahanadi River, Cuttack’s Barabati Stadium was the state’s only recognisable monument to sport. Cricket followers trooped in to watch two Tests in 1987 and 1995 and 20 ODI’s in a span of 37 years; abysmal by any standards. So when India finished on top of the medals standings at the Asian Athletics games with 29 medals, including 12 gold, five bronze and 12 silver, ahead of China’s haul of 20 (eight gold, seven silver and five bronze) and the Kazakhstan tally of eight (four gold, two silver and two bronze), the state’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik pondered over what he had always believed in — there was an insatiable appetite for sport. Channelise that by creating infrastructure and getting the youth involved, and not only sport but in the long run, stars would be created. Not long after, at the close of the Asian Meet, Patnaik announced a ‘Kalinga International Sports City.’ To be set up in Bhubaneswar, “making us eligible to bid for most international competitions including Commonwealth and Asian Games,” he said.
It left a lot of people stunned. But in organising the 2014 Hockey Champions Trophy and then nurturing the state’s team, Kalinga Lancer’s, which won the 2017 Hockey India League, Patnaik and his band of thinkers realised that sport was not just about good organisation, it gave heft to the state and city worldwide. It created an attractive tourism snapshot of 2000 year-old temples and virgin beaches that made Bhubaneswar’s name global — the sport gave it a modern edge.
The way the State took on the challenge of hosting the 22nd edition of Asian Athletics Championships in just 90 days, was the real impetus says Vishal Kumar Dev, an Indian Administrative Service officer who now holds the additional charge of Secretary Sports and Youth Services. He dreams of turning Bhubaneswar into a world class sport city. “If sport is indeed a microcosm of society, the conduct of Asian Athletics Championships 2017 at the Kalinga Stadium reflected the State’s aspirations to rub shoulders with the best in the business.”
Bhubaneswar is not the skyscraper-dominated megalopolis of Dubai or a Detroit, home to four professional US sports teams from the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. Dubai has its International cricket stadium; Spanish Soccer Schools under Salgado; ICC Academy; Rugby Park and The Els Club Golf Course. Bhubaneswar has The Kalinga and a truckload of ambitions. “Hosting International Events like Asian Athletics Championships, Men’s Hockey World League Final 2017, has propelled the emergence of Odisha as a sports powerhouse in the making,” says Dev. “With the rapid growth of Bhubaneswar as a major sports destination, the State government has recently announced setting up of four satellite stadiums in other cities: Cuttack, Sambalpur, Berhampur and Rourkela, with world class infrastructure to create opportunity for international sports events.”
Bhubaneswar hosts the 2018 Hockey World Cup in November/December, a 19-day jamboree with 16 of the world’s best men’s teams in attendance — the city’s biggest sports event till date. Dev is excited. “The Odisha Men’s World Cup Hockey 2018 will be the greatest international event which will be hosted on Odisha soil,” he explains. “A grand opening ceremony... the footfall everyday will be more than 10,000 national and international fans. The seating capacity of the Hockey Stadium will be 15,000. Large LEDs in each District at prominent locations are planned to telecast the matches live.”
The state is also looking to organise the Davis Cup and the Sun-and-sand marathon at Konark, Odisha. It doesn’t need one to be a genius to understand that most of it is tied down to tourism too. “Dubai does it successfully and so does Barcelona,” says Dev. Former Indian 2004 Olympic hockey captain Dilip Tirkey who is a Rajya Sabha member (India’s upper house in Parliament) believes the strategy is quite clear. “Top level sport raises the profile of the state and the capital,” he says. “As infrastructure increases, so does ambition and profile. We struggled. Not the next generation.”
Odisha registered a gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth rate of 7.94 per cent in 2016-17 against the national average of 7.1 per cent. It did see poverty coming down. But for a state that has bauxite (50 per cent), chromite (98 per cent), coal (25 per cent), iron ore (35 per cent), manganese (27 per cent) and nickel ore (91 per cent) of the total nation’s resources, creating an empire out of sports only enhances its power and prestige. India’s 100M national record holders, both men (Amiya Mullick) and women (Dutee Chand) are from Odisha.
Odisha’s affair with sport is almost fantastical, the very idea of a World Sports City far-fetched. But if an Arab fishing village could today proudly sport the Burj Khalifa, for Odisha which traces its history back to 261BC, the idea of a World Sports City doesn’t seem that outlandish.