Margins are small, we need to close them: Rasquinha

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune News Service

Rio de Janeiro, August 23

Viren Rasquinha, the former Indian hockey team captain, was part of the team that finished seventh at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Now, as the CEO of the non-profit Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), he’s trying to mentor and help India’s elite athletes to prepare for the world’s toughest sporting challenge.

Rasquinha had a close look at the performance of the Indian contingent, and especially at the athletes supported by OGQ — these included Deepika Kumari, Vikas Gowda, PV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, Jitu Rai, Gagan Narang, Apurvi Chandela, Heena Sidhu and Yogeshwar Dutt. We spotted Rasquinha consoling and encouraging Indian athletes at various venues as the Indians struggled to get on the medals table.

After Dutt bowed out, Rasquinha spoke about the challenges of creating champions, and what India must do to overcome those challenges. Excerpts:

The Olympics medals table shows that the big economic powers win most of the medals. What are your views?

I don’t think these facts, such as GDP or calorie-intake, matter too much. Money is one of the important factors, but it’s not everything. More important is how you target the spending, how you’re accountable for it. Funding should reach where it really matters. These are the key things. After that, within each sport, we must figure out what’s important.

Perhaps we should have more people playing sport for the sake of it, rather than for the sake of winning medals?

Playing sport for the love of it and playing professionally to win medals are two separate issues. The country should have a culture of sport, but it’s totally different from preparing athletes for the Olympics. These two are related in the sense that the country should promote a culture of sport, so that more people can play. We should not remember the Olympics sports only once in four years. The preparation has to be very targeted, very focussed. We need to improve drastically on that front.

How do we do that?

For every sport, the critical element is coaching at the junior level. That’s one thing in which we’re far behind the rest of the world. It’s not rocket science, really — the combination of coaching, the right training facilities, the right equipment, the right doctors, physiotherapists, nutritionists, mental trainers... Every one of them should be world-class. The motivation levels of our athletes, the hunger and the desire to be the best in the world should be strong. It’s a combination of all these factors. Cumulatively, if we get even one percent better at all of this, then our athletes would stand a chance to win medals at the Olympics.

Yes, the margins aren’t huge, are they?

Yes, the margins aren’t huge in some sports, not all sports. If we can get better at the things I mentioned, we’d stand a chance. We have to be very professional, organise things very efficiently. It’s not rocket science.

What do you think of some of the reactions back home, from people who know little about sport?

See, I don’t really worry about what the media or the celebrities say. Yes, we (sportspersons and those associated with sport) know how tough it is. The margins are so fine. Jitu Rai was almost in the final of the 50m pistol event, with just 3-4 shots to go, and he didn’t make it. Abhinav Bindra almost won a medal in the 10m air rifle event. Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna got very close. Dipa Karmakar was 0.15 of a point away from bronze. The margins have been close in many events. We need to do the little things right, the central things right. If we do that, then there would be a better chance of winning a medal.

And we need to increase the talent pool too?

Yes, we need to widen the base. We need to have more genuine medal contenders. And it starts from a younger age, not when they are on the verge of going to the Olympics.

Is it a concern that most of our athletes in sports such as wrestling, boxing, weightlifting, athletics, hockey, football etc come from non-elite or disadvantaged backgrounds? 

The middle and upper classes encourage their kids to take up only the ‘cool’ sports like tennis or golf or cricket... If you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, if you’re from an elite family, you’ll never be able to take the punishment of being a wrestler or a boxer or a hockey player! I don’t see that happening. But that’s not a factor at all...

Smaller nations with a fraction of India’s population have won medals...

If Hungary, with a population of one crore people, is winning eight gold medals, or Moldova (population 36 lakh, 1 bronze) or Azerbaijan (population 1 crore, 18 medals) are winning so many medals, we can too...

In the tough sports, the kids will come from maybe the less privileged backgrounds, you can’t expect a rich man’s kid to do wrestling and boxing, it would be foolish to expect this. But those are irrelevant factors. We do have the talent in this huge population, and we need to identify the talent and give them right kind of support.

PV Sindhu won a silver, and you at OGQ must be very proud of her.

OGQ has been supporting her since she was 14, and it was a very emotional experience to watch her come of age and win silver. There were tears in my eyes. And it was great to watch Sakshi Malik (supported by JSW Sport) win a bronze too. They made us proud.