Olympic medals still a distant dream

Recently, this newspaper carried a pocket cartoon showing a worried looking Indian Olympic Association chairman Suresh Kalmadi preparing to do rope gymnastics.

That small cartoon spoke volumes because instead of ropes, Kalmadi was staring at a pair of hanging handcuffs. The caricature captured the spirit of the CBI’s on-going probe into the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam, and was symbolic of the state of sports administration in the country.

In 2008, the country hosted the Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG) in Pune. This was an all-out Kalmadi show and approximately Rs350 crore was spent on upgrading the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex at Balewadi. Pune was proud and the entire sports fraternity was happy that world-class infrastructure was being created to train our athletes.

Yet, amidst the joy, there were fears that after the CYG, the sports infrastructure would suffer neglect and the complex would become a white elephant. Those fears have proved true three years later.

To raise funds for maintenance, the Balewadi complex is routinely rented out for non-sporting events such as fashion shows, annual gatherings and even weddings. The air-conditioned venue is attractive, spacious and has ample parking - something that is scarce in much of Pune.

But this leads to abuse of the venue, as happened when the badminton, table tennis and weightlifting halls were leased out for Rs24 lakh for the lavish wedding of Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s niece.

Two days after the wedding, the three halls and the premises were littered with garbage: empty water bottles, paper cups and plates, withering bouquets, and empty firecracker shells. The wooden floor of the weightlifting hall had four fresh holes, ostensibly to put up poles for the reception canopy.

A portion of the wooden flooring in the badminton hall was found warped and uneven - apparently it had got wet from the oil and water spilling around from the cooking for the feast. The international-standard synthetic mats suffered scratches after iron-legged dining tables were put on them.

On the following day, some young athletes had to take brooms and mops in their hands to clean up the court before practice in the weightlifting hall.

The Maharashtra Sports Directorate officials were unrepentant and felt a mountain was being made of a molehill while. The state minister for sports, Padmakar Valvi, promised to “look into the matter” and get the garbage removed. Obviously, there’s little they can do as the venue was leased out to a former chief minister’s brother and an entire galaxy of politicians, including Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, were in attendance.

Politicians are in the habit of abusing national property with impunity and often there’s no one to pull them up. With the culture of callousness displayed by politicians and sport bureaucrats, how close will our athletes come to winning Olympic medals?
It’s the same old anguished cry again: Let iron-willed professionals - and not babus - run our sports administration.

Free it from political control. Create centres of excellence, rather than perpetuating the culture of mediocrity in Indian sports administration.