For about 3 weeks beginning July 23 to August 13, the headlines reporting on notoriously infamous Novel Corona Virus COVID-19 pandemic all over the globe was eclipsed by the World famous Olympic fever for a short change. Sports enthusiasts all over the globe have eagerly watched the performance of their favorite star and their country’s performance in winning of Olympic medals. For 1.3 billion Indians the spillover of the Olympic fever have continued for sometimes with felicitation and cash awards to the medal winners and participant Olympian having performed ever best Olympic performance winning 7 medals in the Olympic outings since 1900. The first Indian participation in the Olympic was in 1900 at Paris where Norman Pritchard participated and won two silver medals. There was 28 years wait for the next medal and at the Amsterdam Olympic 1928 India won the Gold Medal in Field Hockey and retain the Gold through the 1932 Los Angeles, 1936 Berlin, 1948 London, 1952 Helsinki and 1956 Melbourne Olympics for straight 6 times. However India lost to Pakistan and settled for Silver Medal in the 1960 Rome Olympic. But in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic, India avenged the defeat of 1960 Rome Olympic and beat Pakistan to reclaim the Gold Medal in hockey.
The last Gold to India in the Field Hockey was at Moscow Olympic 1980 which however was luck luster having boycotted the Game by 66 countries protesting against the Soviet Union occupation of Afghanistan. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic witness another boycott call, this time by Soviet Union in retaliation of the boycott of Moscow Olympic 1980 which was boycotted by 16 countries. At the Los Angeles Olympic India lost the shine of the Gold and returned home empty handed, not even a bronze, being relegated to 4th place. After a hiatus of 41 long years draught in Hockey medal, this time again at Tokyo the Indian Hockey saw resurgence and won the bronze medal driving the whole nation into frenzy celebration.
With coming into the end of Indian monopoly of hockey at the Olympic game, the Gold medal prospect for India came to a grinding halt. Indian sports thing tank was focused mostly on Hockey, Athletics, Wrestling, till the nineties. The first Olympic Medal for India was two silver medals in Athletics in the 1900 Paris Olympic although won by a European thus Athletics is a pioneer Olympic discipline in India. In 1960, Milkha Singh neck named, Flying Sikh came so close to winning a medal but finished fourth in the 400 meters race with a timing of 45.73 seconds.
The finishing of the race was so close that photo finish was referred to adjudge the medal winning. From the photo finish it is clearly seen the bronze medal winner thrusting his head forward to reach the finish line whereas Milkha Singh keep his head vertically straight in line with the body and came fourth. Another sensational finish is that of P.T. Usha in the 400 meters hurdle race at 1984 Los Angeles Olympic where she missed the bronze medal by 100th of a second.
The much awaited medal in the track and field events (Athletic) has finally happened with Neeraj Chopra’s Gold in Javelin this time at 2020 Tokyo Olympics vindicating the effort of the Athletic Federation of India. This time around, the Ministry of YRS under the able leadership of Mr. Kiren Rijuju as the then MOS YRS have invested colossal sum of money endeavoring to get double digit medals in the Tokyo Olympic.
The Annual Championship and Training Calendar (ACTC) was compulsorily asked from all the Federations and training camp were conducted throughout the year and sent the team abroad to participate in the invitational tournament for exposures and experience. Almost all the individual athletes have gone abroad for coaching training with foreign coach for polishing their finer points. Thus the 7 medals India got were at a high cost and effort both by the Ministry, Federation and the individual athletes and was not a cake walk.
The high medal hope sports disciplines which failed to achieve any medal are Archery and Shooting in spite of doing well and carving out a niche in the world elite group, Deepika Kumari being the World Champion. Women’s Wrestling is the third discipline which too faltered away at the neck of the hour.
The Men boxing is another discipline which was expected to perform well and expected gold medal from World Champion Amit Panghal thus the aim of double digit medal sadly faltered away.
The largest number of athletes to the Tokyo Olympic was from Haryana State with 31 athletes, followed by; Punjab 14, Kerala 9, Tamil Nadu 8, Maharashtra 8, Manipur 5, Orissa 4, Rajasthan 4, Delhi 3, Jharkhand 3, Karnataka 3, West Bengal 3, Andhra Pradesh 2, Gujarat 2, M.P. 2, Telangana 2, Assam 1, Himachal Pradesh 1, Mizoram 1, Sikkim 1, Uttarakhand 1.
Having concluded the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the talk of Olympic fever have died down and now there is talk of Olympic temper. In our own State Million dollar question is being asked why no one from Nagaland could qualify to the Olympics. The criticism of the Sports Department and the Sports Association, the absence of sports culture, lack of State of art infrastructure, fund constraints are the reasons attributed to our State’s failure to produce Olympian, thus the reason for our failure are multiple and cannot point to a single reason. All the reasons attributed are true and valid, means we are at ground zero.
Bottom line, the need of developing sports culture is paramount importance. Sports is not a new thing in our state having produced Dr. T. Ao the first Captain of the Indian Football team to London Olympic way back in the year 1948. Nagaland is also one of the pioneer state to carved out a separate Sports Department dating back to 1978-79 whereas the Ministry of YRS in India was established after the IXTH Asian Games New Delhi 1982 with Mr. Buta Singh as the First Sports Minister with independent charge.
(To be continued…)
T. Meren Paul
President, Nagaland Amateur Boxing Association