‘My medal belongs to every Indian, the way they rejoiced was my greatest reward’

You’re carrying it (the medal) in your pocket, I believe.

You’d like to see it?

Can we take a look? Why just see it, I think all Indians would like to get a feel of it.

Absolutely, that’s why I’m sending it across the nation and I’m just hoping that it goes to every school. I think the kids would be motivated the most if they hold the Olympic medal in their hands. I want to send the message across that this is silver, don’t depend on me to win an Olympic gold, you go and win it.

You were close to a gold as well, I think your rankings would have given you the confidence to have a shot at the gold.

Yes, certainly. Before going in I was telling people — and, more importantly, I was telling myself — that there’s only gold for me and I don’t want to come back with anything other than the gold. But I must also say now that that’s what competition is all about. Everyday is different. Al Makhtoum was unbeatable that day. I could probably beat him now. I’d beaten him one month before but that was one month before…That’s what sports is all about.

It was the prince vs the soldier.

You’ve put it aptly.

You know, we chose this venue, Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate, with some thought in mind. Does it take a soldier to win a medal for India? Many people are now saying only the Army can do it, only the discipline of the armed forces can do it, the Indian sports structure is too messed up. In fact, I’ve also written that abolish the IOA, give it to the Army if you can’t fix it.

No, I think that’s a little extreme. But firstly, if you say only soldiers can win a medal, I think you are forgetting that the soldiers are coming from the same society, the same people, and you are taking the value, the credit away from the society. I think India has the capability of doing it. We have immense skill, we have the patience, we have a history behind us of great warriors. We can do it, certainly, that’s first. Second, the system is good, it needs to be improved further. I say good because I am a product of the system but that doesn’t mean it’s the best. What you just mentioned would be extreme steps.

Well, those are extreme reactions because you know you have the Olympics every four years, even the Asian Games, in fact, most sports events, international events, after which we say we can’t do it.

In fact, before I went for the Olympics, one of the things that was a point of determination for me was people giving me a very disgruntled look and saying, ‘‘Look, you’ve been for Olympics…you just go for tafri there and come back.’’ That was something that really charged me up. I think we have the capability of putting up many more champions. Now, when the team comes back, instead of the usual blame-game, the media should focus on finding solutions as to how we can improve. What are the key issues which need to be addressed? Let’s hold seminars. We’ve been representing the country; we lose, the country loses, we win, the country wins. The country wants to win an Olympic medal. Let the country decide, let the schools hold seminars and functions and send across a few solutions to the Sports Minister. I’m sure that of the hundreds and thousands of solutions that will come up — we have brilliant minds in the country — a few of them would be applicable.

Well, the other point is why must we only reward sportsmen when they get medals? Because you can be among the top 10, top 20 and that’s a very good achievement as well. Do we make it too difficult for our sportsmen to get rewarded for their performance?

That point is to do with the financial security of a sportsman which is very important. It’s so normal for parents to tell their children that look, concentrate on academics. ‘‘Khel-vel to chalta rahega, you won’t get a job out of it’’ or ‘‘how long will you continue playing.’’ So that’s where we need to provide a kind of financial security.

In fact, that’s what most Indian parents would say: take a crack at IITs or IIMs or maybe medical colleges because then maybe the odds are one in one thousand. But if you want to become a sportsman, make a living out of it, then the odds will be one in God knows how many.

Yes, China has the system where they pick up youngsters and the parents are told that you can forget about them, they would be looked after by the country, and they are really looked after by the country. I met Subroto Roy and he was mentioning Sahara having a sports academy in Ambi Valley where they will do the same. If things like that come up I think it would change the face of sporting culture here.

But what do you do to build a larger base? We have one medal winner and then nothing.

This is another thing, it’s not only social or financial security, another thing is the culture, the sports culture. In Europe, it’s so normal, in the evenings there are people coming and sitting down in the football fields, parents sitting outside, the children playing — and it is a very organised sport. I’ve seen kids playing in proper kits, it’s a culture that throws up champions.

Is that what you find in the Army, a culture of sporting competition?

Certainly, the Army does provide a great opportunity. Army officers’ kids get an opportunity to pick up any sport. That needs to percolate down to the society in general. What stops us from having clubs? I mean I feel so passionate about this, when I see children playing,I want to call them and tell them to organise a club. Their parents could put in Rs 100 each month so that the fund could be used to buy a football, cricket bats, pads and have it organised as a club. The moment you have an organisation, things seem a little better.

You were very privileged though. You come from a family with a fauji tradition, and from a city with a tradition of marksmanship, Bikaner.

Yes, in that respect I’m certainly lucky. We’ve grown up with guns, there was a love for guns. But I think all kids love sports, I haven’t seen a kid who doesn’t have a toy gun with him. You need to start loving a certain sport and that’s what carries on when you grow up.

You come from a family with many generations in the Army…

Yes, my father was in the army, my father’s elder brother, my grandfather, great grandfather — everybody was in the army. People thought that we couldn’t do much else, besides playing with guns, serving the nation and following orders!

At Bikaner itself, Maharaja Karni Singh and the rest….You know, you produced many champions.

Yes, Rajasthan at one point of time represented the country and the entire team was from Rajasthan, but now things have changed. A lot of shooters are from Punjab, from Delhi, UP… so things are changing now and this elitist sport is now available to everyone. The government has relaxed rules in shooting clubs in every district and they can import cartridges without paying customs duty on it.

When did you take up shooting seriously? I believe you had started out trying to be a cricketer like everyone else?

Like all the other kids, yes.

A fast bowler.

I was a fast bowler, a batsman, I was an all-rounder. I was playing for a club in Jabalpur, Mohanlal Hargovind Das, I was pretty good at it in Class X. I used to start training at about 3 pm and continue till late in the evening trying to bowl, putting one coin on the pitch and trying to bounce the ball on that spot. And then I went to the National Defence Academy. That was the end of my cricketing career. Then I started other sports, I boxed there…

You could not have carried on with cricket at NDA? Cricket is not really promoted in the Army. It’s a sport that doesn’t have many patrons there. I think it’s the only institution in India that doesn’t promote cricket because otherwise our sports seem so dominated by cricket.

Certainly, in the Army we prefer sports which are for short durations, are high energy and which built a lot of camaraderie.

Which are straightforward contact sports.

That too because the Army is trying to bring out a person’s character or improve it. Everyone has to box in the Army, it is compulsory. And so these are some sports that help an individual build his character, not that cricket does not. I love that sport but it takes a lot of time and the Army doesn’t want to waste that much time.

And you think cricket doesn’t build camaraderie the way football or hockey does?

No, that would be a wrong thing to say but when the batsman walks in, he’s a lone man there. Cricket is a fantastic game and I love it, the people love it and it should remain so. But the point is that we must respect every individual or every such skill that makes us hold our head high.

Do you think other games have suffered because of this excessive emphasis on cricket in India?

Maybe, but cricket is not to be blamed for that. What is to be blamed is the system, the system which is promoting other sports. Even the people must realise that we are representing them. When people tell me or used to tell me very sarcastically that I was wasting my time at the Olympics, they were in a way humiliating themselves because I’m representing them.

So what kind of people told you that you were wasting your time at the Olympics?

Normal people.

What would the logic be?

I wish I knew because it was totally illogical for me. The fact that we haven’t been doing well doesn’t mean that we don’t push ourselves to do well in the future. If cricket is doing well, it’s doing well in 10 countries, 14 countries at the maximum. Here, we are competing with 202 countries. So our present performance has been pretty good. There are sportsmen who have done well…the shooters have come up.

In fact, I find that shooters, archers, many of the boxers, have improved their rankings. Athletes, now Beenu in the 400 metres — a medal is not everything, the man has gone very far.

A medal will not come all of a sudden. It’ll come with hard work, it’ll come with dedication, it’ll come when people start loving the sport, start pushing us, start saying: ‘‘look, you are representing us, we want you to practice’’. See the kind of motivation that a sportsman will have when somebody walks up to him and says that. He’ll probably turn around and go back to his training. And see the demoralisation he’ll go through when nobody even recognises him and taunts him that he only came 11th. Eleventh is damned good. I spoke to one athlete who was representing our country in judo and he came 11th but he beat an American. That American must have had so much of support for his training. The fact is that an Indian beat an American and then lost to the world champion — it was bad luck that in his group, he came up against him. The fact remains that we are improving and all of a sudden we will not win all the medals.

In fact, that’s the point. Unless you have at least 100 Indians who can figure in the top 10 in their respective Olympic sport, how can you produce many medal winners?

Certainly, we need to widen our base and one of the ways of doing that is if people start loving sports, start loving the fact that if we play this sport, we have an opportunity to beat 202 countries.

When people told you that you were wasting your time at the Olympics — I know that this is illogical — but what did they say? Did they say that you are not going to win medals or your discipline is not sexy enough?

See, it’s not exactly those words that everyone used. There are various ways of discouraging a person. Through my journey of trying to get funds, there were times when I kept standing for hours and a clerk wouldn’t sign the paper — and I was a Commonwealth champion that time. It was too demeaning for me to tell him that. I didn’t want to say that. I stood there for hours and he would say it’s 4 pm, his office was till 5 pm but he stopped work at 4 pm, so I should come on Monday. And I’m telling him, ‘‘My flight is now, in the evening, you just have to sign that.’’ There was one time when I felt so humiliated that I had to tell him that I was a Commonwealth champion. If there was a cricketer standing there, would he have behaved the same way?

He would perhaps pull out a notebook, ask for autographs, for his children, for his landlord’s children.

I felt so humiliated that I had to tell him. It’s not like me to say things like that but I had to tell him.

How was your experience with the corporate world? They’ve been talking about sponsoring sports, sponsoring prospective medal winners.

I think the corporate world has been talking a lot.

Because now many of us have said that privatise sport, bring in corporate support.

We’ve been talking about that and the corporate world has been holding a lot of meetings but the results haven’t been too encouraging. I had put up my proposal to the corporate world but things didn’t materialise. They probably found my training programme too frivolous. My programme was finally funded by the government. And that means it was funded by the money of the people so that’s why I say that the medal is yours, absolutely yours. It belongs to every Indian and the way the country is rejoicing means that every individual Indian is feeling that he has won it. And I think that’s my greatest reward. My training programme was very well prepared by me because I very methodically went about the things I needed to focus on: what were the things I needed to eliminate from my character and be a winner.

What will you say to a youngster, to a kid whose parents tell him to prepare for IIT, prepare for IIM and forget sports. I am asking you also because you are an NDA topper, you won the sword of honour, you excelled in academics as well. I believe that is also a very tough competition, isn’t it?

I have to say that anyone who wants to do well in sports, if he has to keep up he must not neglect academics. See there are people like Sachin Tendulkar who’ve dropped out of school and done well. But how many Sachin Tendulkars are there? That’s what the parents say. You need to focus on your studies certainly. If you are good enough in your studies you can draw time for your sports. That is the ideal condition but then there are conditions wherein you are not good at studies and that’s when I would tell the parents that if your ward, your son or your daughter is not good at studies, it’s wrong on your part to force them. Firstly, I should not be advising, I’m not in a position to start advising, parents are knowledgeable enough to give advice.

You are a role model.

But yes, now I’m thinking as to what I would tell my child and I think parents must know that if the child is not good at a certain subject, you can’t push him into that. I’ve had my cousins being pushed into science and maths.

All of us were pushed into studying science.

Because my relatives feel that it is only engineers or doctors that earn a living. But that’s a wrong concept, I think. Things are changing now in the world.

But sports should also have a place. Do you think children have to strike a balance?

Balance in life is certainly good and sports must have a place in that balance because a good sportsman is usually a man of good character. It builds character, it builds camaraderie, it builds team spirit, it builds leadership qualities. A life without sports is no life at all.

Tell me something, you’re 34 years old, you took up shooting only about six years back in 1998. In six years, you’ve been ranked number one in the world, now an Olympic silver medal. What lies ahead? Are there more frontiers to conquer, are you now becoming more of a sportsman, will you continue to be a soldier? How will you handle this fame and where do you go from here?

I will continue to be a soldier, I love the Army, I will always be a part of the Army and one always moves ahead from here so there’s no going back.

You’ve done a tour of duty in Kashmir, I believe.

Yes, I was in Kashmir from 1994 to 1996.

Tough times?

The best times.

It’s amazing how many soldiers have said that to me because all of us think it must be a very tough place but I know so many young officers, young soldiers who say the best time was Kashmir, ‘‘We paid our dues.’’

You will probably not meet an officer who will say that it was his worst time. No one will say that. You see, it is tough. When I was under a lot of pressure during the Olympics, I called up my wife and asked: ‘‘What am I doing here?’’ I mean there was so much of pressure. I told her, ‘‘You better start working… I’d rather be in Baramulla.’’ It is so with the soldiers in Kashmir as well. You have that pressure when you are going there but when you are doing that job you have a sense of satisfaction. When you accomplish that job you feel a great sense of pride. As my coach says, it’s like pregnancy, its tough on the lady but she wants to go through it because it produces a fantastic result.

You have produced a medal. Inspiring words Major Rathore, an officer, a gentleman, a champion.