The looks of a loser

Freeman’s timings in the heat was 51.63; she peaked only in time for the final where she clocked 49.11. Contrast this with our own Beenamol’s efforts. She had the best first-round timing of 51.51, but then fell to 51.8, and finally 52.04. She was spent long before the final. And her statement after she was eliminated — "We are not used to running three days in a row"– must count as the most damning indictment of our system. Simply put, if you cannot maintain your level of performance over the period it takes to finish on top, then you have no business participating in the Olympic Games. If Beenamol didn’t know it, her coach/psychologist should have. The inference is that Indian athletes do not train with any medal prospect in mind. And such a defeatist attitude is self-fulfilling. So starved are we of any success that had Malleshwari not won the bronze, Beenamol might have emerged as the national icon after the Olympics. And that, for getting into the semifinals of an event. It might be churlish to comedown so heavily on our best athlete at the Games. But the rest are hardly worth getting into a lather over.

After all, what can you say about a shot putter who fouls up two of three attempts, a javelin thrower whose mark is nearly ten metres under what he has recorded at home (which was still under the qualifying mark at the heats), and all those others who performed as if in a dream to extend our nightmare?

The other damning quote came from Malleshwari herself. She has in the past lifted 10 kg more than her Olympic effort which fetched her the bronze. But she decided not to push for gold, because, as she said, “My coaches and I decided to play it safe.” The guaranteed bronze in hand is worth a speculative gold in the air for a country which has seen so few of either metal in seven decades of Olympic participation. Were we a more successful nation on the sports field, then surely Malleshwari would have gone for the gold. Lack of success breeds insecurity; and excessive security is the enemy of the successful athlete who must be prepared to risk a little in order to win a lot.

In the short-term, the bronze medal would have done more for the officials who were on a junket in Sydney than perhaps even Malleshwari herself. Apart from basking in the reflected glory of an Indian medal-winner at the 100th anniversary of women’s participation at the Games, they can hope that much of their work will now be hidden from public view. A medal in hockey would probably have meant a bigger contingent of officials at the next Games. In their cooler moments, the hockey players will admit that they lost the competition in the mind too. Skipper Ramandeep was honest enough to say after the loss to Korea (which ultimately made the difference) that “we tried too much to play like the Koreans”. Yes, we ought to have played our game. Team games, more than individual sports, call out for a psychologist. In the past the captain or the coach played the role simply because systems were not as complex as they are now. The inability to defend a lead against Poland — or, more positively speaking, add to it –had as much to do with what happened on the field as what needed to be done off it.

For too many years, when a victory was imperative, our coaches have taken the apparently simple and safe route: “Score early, and sit on the lead”. For too many years our teams have paid the price. India needed to score two goals to increase their chances, not one. It was a sight to see the reserves break into premature celebration quite early into the second half of the game. For a team that had worked so hard, spent so many hours training, and had begun so well at the Games, ultimately their psychological immaturity let them down. And that is sad. There will be the usual post mortems, the well-orchestrated breast-beating, the reservoir of excuses, the talk of the future, and finally everything will die down. That is how it has been all these years.

If India’s agony and embarrassment is not to continue, serious thought must be given to the way we are. Let us investigate the so-called `home’ records that don’t stand the test when our athletes compete abroad. How clean are our athletes? Isn’t it time we introduced mandatory and random dope tests in and out of competition? If we have to compete against the professionals from the rest of the world, let us get our act together professionally at the very least. The easy way out would be to blame our sportsmen. But they are merely the products of a system. The system needs to be overhauled. Winning is a matter of habit, a matter of the mind, a matter that needs to be focused on at every level. Our system is geared towards producing gracious losers. We need aggressive winners. Bring on the psychologists.

Competitions are won first in the mind. The secret to victory in an event that runs for days is the ability to perform at the peak only when it matters