-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rahul Chandawarkar is a Colva based journalist and former editor. He is a recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award for 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLURB
UK Sport is accountable to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and solely responsible for the Britain’s sports performance at international events. It does not have to look at grass root sport
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prime Minister Modi’s recent announcement to appoint a special task force to drive India’s preparations for the next three Olympics is a step in the right direction, provided it is implemented properly. And the good news is that we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We simply need to emulate the best practices of Great Britain, who revitalised their sports programme so dramatically after their athletes returned home with a solitary gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Following Britain’s debacle at the 1996 Games, their government launched UK Sport, a high performance sports agency to fund and support their national sports associations with the sole aim of winning medals at the Olympics and Paralympics. The proposed Indian Olympics task force needs to be a similar entity.
UK Sport is run along corporate lines and is headed by Liz Nicholl, the CEO, a former international netball player whose team comprises committed business managers. Today, UK Sport invests funds from their National Lottery and national tax exchequer to fund various national level sports associations. As is well known, UK Sport spent a whopping $350 million to support its 374 sportspeople for the Rio Games. It is good to hear that the proposed Indian Olympics task force too is set to comprise sports experts from India and abroad.
UK Sport’s funding decisions are made on a four-year basis to cover a complete Olympic Games and Paralympics, but it also focuses on an eight-year plan to cover at least two Games. Typically, UK Sport’s success is measured by the number of medals won, the number of medallists developed, and the quality of the systems and processes in place to find and support the nation’s best athletes.
A majority of UK Sport’s funds are channelized in two distinct areas. Firstly, to fund the various sporting national governing bodies (NGBs) enabling them to operate a World Class Programme (WCP) which ensures that the athletes get the best facilities and support staff. And secondly to fund the Athlete Performance Award (APA), which is paid directly to the athletes and contributes to their living and sporting costs. India also kicked off a similar initiative with its Target Olympic Podium (TOP) programme which funded all the 121 athletes who went to Rio. However, this was done just one year prior to the Games. Hopefully, the new task force will plan and execute this aspect better.
UK Sport also runs a number of support services which include the development of world class coaches and talent identification campaigns to spot future medallists. This is a very critical feature and absolutely needs to be emulated. Fortunately, the PMO’s recent announcement, “The task force will prepare overall strategy for sports facility, training, selection procedure and other related matters," seems to echo a similar sentiment.
UK Sport is accountable to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and solely responsible for the Britain’s sports performance at international events. It does not have to look at grass root sport. That is the job of organisations like the Home Country Sports Councils (Sport England, Sport Wales, Sport Scotland and Sport Northern Ireland) who concentrate on developing school and community sports. It is here that the role of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) becomes critical. The SAI will have to be made accountable to drive effective grass roots sports programmes through its regional units.
Of course, a unique Indian challenge will also be to overhaul all our sports associations. Sadly, most of them are being run by politicians and bureaucrats who do not understand sport. It is here that the recent, Justice Lodha committee recommendations will come in handy. The recommendations which have specifically been aimed at the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) forbid politicians, bureaucrats and individuals above the age of 70 from running the BCCI or any state cricket association.
The new Olympics task force should be empowered to enforce Lodha recommendations on every single, sports association in the country at the district, state and national level. Ideally, all our sports associations must be managed by former sportspeople or effective business managers.
Indian boxing is a case in point on how badly we run our sports associations. The association has been in a state of administrative turmoil since 2012, when the erstwhile Indian Amateur Boxing Federation (IABF) was terminated by the international body for manipulation of elections.
The imbroglio has adversely affected our boxers, who have been starved of international tournaments and vital exposure for several years. Just sample this. While a record eight boxers ( seven men and one woman) represented India in the London Olympics in 2012, only three male boxers represented the country at the Rio games.
Fortunately, the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) has now been formed and has the support of a majority of the state associations. But even here, we must learn from Great Britain. Great Britain (GB) Boxing was established in October 2008 to manage UK Sport’s World Class Performance Programme (WCPP) to prepare and train their boxers.
Since London 2012, the GB Boxing squad has won 22 medals at eight major international tournaments and at least 10 boxers from Great Britain qualified for the Olympic Games in Rio.
All this is not rocket science. We can and we must revitalise sport in India.
