Concept has promise, execution goes for a toss
Sports ministry’s ambitious scheme for Rio is nowhere close to making life easy for athletes
NEW DELHI: (Venue: Shastri Bhawan, sports ministry’s headquarters)
Official 1: Saina (Nehwal) wants a personal trainer, now.
Official 2: But she already has a physio; he can help her with the gym work. Official 2: Umm! Both are different, Sir. The inane conversation between the two sports ministry officials finally saw India’s top shuttler and London Olympic Games bronze-medallist get a trainer in October last year — Deckline Leitao being handed over the appointment letter.
But the matter didn’t end there. The officials also discussed utilising the services of Saina’s physio, Siddharth Sakalle, for the entire badminton squad. It’s another matter that he would have had to travel between Bangalore — where Nehwal is currently based — and Hyderabad, where the rest of the squad is training.
This lack of understanding of the specialised requirements of elite athletes and many more issues ail the ministry’s ambitious Target Olympics Podium scheme (TOPS), a marquee platform to aid the country’s medal hopefuls.
Little wonder then that, athletes and their coaches have started questioning the way things are being handled — or mishandled — in the corridors of the ministry.
CAUGHT IN RED TAPE
Ronak Pandit, a former shooter of repute, who now coaches wife, pistol shooter Heena Sidhu, fulltime, is frustrated with the daily dose of officialdom.
The angst is very much noticeable in his voice when he says, “There is a huge difference in the way the scheme was envisaged and the way it is actually being run. Pandit, who also coaches another top shooter from Maharashtra, Rahi Sarnobat, says the ministry’s advisors who vet the applications and training schedules of athletes, are “not up to the level of athletes” whose files they dissect.
“Can (former shooter) Shilpi Bisht take a call on Abhinav Bindra’s application, or for that matter Heena Sidhu’s? No. I don’t think she is qualified enough to do that,” Pandit said, his distress clearly showing.
“No doubt, she is a former shooter…is an Arjuna Awardee, but I don’t think she knows about the modern needs of shooters these days,” he adds. Nor are they bothered about the time-bound clearance of grants to athletes.
Heena and Rahi were allocated ₹75 lakh and ₹45 lakh respectively and, as per the scheme, they were to get 40% of the sum immediately, while the rest was to be released after they qualified for the Rio Games. Heena qualified for Rio on January 27, but is still waiting to get the first installment at a time when she should have been planning her training schedule with the remaining 60%.
“We are in a position where we can manage funds. But think of those athletes who don’t have that kind of money; how will they cope with the delay? It is because of issues like these that the scheme is falling flat,” he said.
PEPPERED WITH PAPERWORK The athletes’ trial by red tape starts the moment he agrees to the terms and conditions of the scheme. An long list of affidavits and papers has to be submitted to get the promised sum, which no one knows how and when they would get.
The initiation happens when he submits his documents for foreign training stint 3-4 weeks in advance. The tickets, as is the norm, are booked through Balmer & Lawrie Co Ltd. The charges — usually 75-90% of the total amount — are transferred directly into the accounts of coaches or academies where the athletes would train. The athlete only gets his DA, boarding & lodging money, and, if required, money to buy equipment.
The final bills are only released once the athlete submits a sheaf of paperwork, including the coach’s report, bills and account statement, among others. But this is an ‘ideal scenario’. If one throws in delays on the part of officials, missing documents, more holdups in approvals, it is the beginning of a troubled journey. In such cases, then, the proposal “is approved in principle”, which means athletes will be refunded after training. Thus begins another chapter of correspondence and visits to the corridors of power.
Ronak explains it, saying, “We regularly employ Peirre Beauchamp (sports scientist) to help Heena. I can’t expect him to wait for months to get his money because we are waiting for funds to be released. He is a professional and will walk out if he doesn’t get his fee on time. So we pay him from our pockets.”
Try reasoning out with athletes that the selection to the scheme is fair and beyond reproach, and they will tell you there are a lot of grey areas. In fact, some of the selections were done without looking at the performance or knowing whether the athletes would make it to the Indian contingent for Rio or not. The most bizarre is the representation of 26 track and field athletes in the scheme, where the odds of finishing on the podium are minimal.
4X400M RIDDLE
Sample this: Barring MR Poovamma, all women quarter-milers in the national camp have failed to clock sub-53 seconds in the 2015 season. Ashwini Akkunji, who spent most of last year on the bench owing to niggles, was picked under the scheme. Though she bagged silver at the South Asian Games, clocking 58.92sec in 400m hurdles, it was a below-par performance. And it’s not possible to improve 4-5 seconds in one season.
During the 2004 Athens Olympics, when the women’s 4x400m relay team reached the final, almost all of them had clocked sub-52 seconds. Then, Manjeet Kaur, the national record holder, ran her semifinal relay leg in 49.85sec. The scenario is quite different now, with only Poovamma showing some potential.
In one particular case, the scheme’s talent-identification committee went against the recommendations of the federation, which had indicated that Mandeep Kaur might not be available for Rio. In April last year, the committee felt that since Mandeep was ‘an iconic player’, her name should be included.” The athlete was allocated ₹30 lakh.
Archer Dola Banerjee’s name was included even though the association had said her chances of making the Indian team were minimal. She too was earmarked ₹30 lakh. As expected, Dola did not qualify for the second selection trials.
DIFFERENT YARDSTICKS
In badminton, Ajay Jayaram’s omission is glaring. After Kidambi Srikanth (ranked 10th) and Parupalli Kashyap (17th), Jayaram is the third highestranked Indian at 21. Yet, HS Prannoy (26), B Sai Praneeth (27) and RMV Gurusaidutt (55) find their names in the list.
Triple jumper Arpinder Singh’s original plan to go and train at the Chula Vista High Performance centre in the US was shot down by the Athletics Federation of India, which did not approve of his plan to take his coach, SS Pannu, along. He had to settle for the London Coaching Foundation, where his performance has dipped from a personal best of 17.17m to 16.41. But while Arpinder was ‘unlucky’, shot putter Inderjit Singh’s trip to the Aphelion Athletics Club in Pennsylvania was cleared by the ministry despite a question mark on the credentials of the club. That too with two personal coaches — Shakti Singh and Pritam Singh.
SPARING THE AXE
When the scheme was launched last year in April, the then sports secretary, Ajit Sharan, had said that those showing no improvement would be weeded out. But 11 months down the line, the chopping process hasn’t started yet. The new chairman, TOPS identification committee, Anju Bobby George, indicated that the committee would meet later this month. “We are meeting either on 18 or 19… we will weed out some names and add some 16 names to the list,” she told HT.