The Golden Team

Or,to be more precise,the lives of 25 athletes whom OGQ funds and supports in four disciplines athletics,boxing,shooting and badminton. The list includes current stars such as Gagan Narang and Saina Nehwal,MC Marykom and Tintu Luka,as well as unknown names,chosen by talent scouts on recommendations of senior players or by poring over the results of junior national tournaments.

For OGQ,a non-profit body formed by Prakash Padukone and Geet Sethi,the mission is to change what is often called Indian sports biggest embarrassment a country of a billion,and a medal tally of one at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. To maximise the prospects of the fraction of that billion,who despite all discouragement from a non-sporting country obsessed with marks and jobs,turn up to play at international events,year after year,and even dream of winning.

As the only hands-on,day-to-day administrator of the organisation,Rasquinhas work is never done. Goosebumps about imagining the Tricolour rise and the national anthem being sung do get evoked now and then,as he and his fellow board directors,Sethi and Leander Paes,encourage yet another person to spontaneously sign a cheque the OGQ runs entirely on private donations. But topmost on OGQs list of priorities is to identify prospective medal hopes.

Like Shiva Thapa,the 17-year-old who snared a World Champion in the bantam-weight category at the Winner International in Belgrade last month. Thapa was picked soon after he won a silver at the World Youth Olympics last year,and his Belgrade success came after some hectic work by OGQ-appointed medics on his right shoulder niggle.

Or Rakesh Manpat from Karnataka,a 21-year-old shooter who lost his father early,and watched dispiritedly as his elder brother aborted his own career in shooting,and take up a job to finance his brothers aspirations. It would have been too daunting to fund two shooting careers in the family and he gave up his for me, Manpat says. OGQ,he adds,stepped in at the right time to procure expensive ammunition and guns. A few seasons ago,Manpat lost his place in the national squad for lack of focus and a bratty attitude. He was back on track after a dose of unprintables from Rasquinha. Within a year,he had shot a score that tied with Abhinav Bindra and showed a changed mindset,far different from the confused Yo image that he would go around with earlier, he says.

Rasquinha remembers a chaotic day from a summer ago when Manpat,having been chosen to travel to Germany for his maiden international,made a distress call from somewhere between Bangalore and Chennai. He had to grapple with a journey from Pune to Bangalore,and then on to Delhi via Chennai,by train and bus to get a visa,before he dialled the helpline. Both the visa formalities and tickets to Germany were sorted out in a few hours.

An athletes life in India is as much about the big problems of critical mass in sports culture or infrastructure as it is about the million niggling ones. Chess legend Vishwanathan Anand,who is also a director of OGQ,remembers the late 1980s when something as simple as getting foreign exchange wrecked preparations for a tournament,and,in one extreme case,led to the Indians reaching a tournament late by an entire day. The worst thing for a sportsperson is to be distracted by matters other than the game. So its particularly satisfying to be part of an organisation that spares the athletes those troubles, he says.

The idea for the organisation arose from Geet Sethis frustration with the extreme official apathy he encountered as a member of the Indian contingent at the Asian Games in 1998. I was a vociferous critic of how everything from preparation to diet were run. And I made myself a nuisance ranting away, he says. When he came back,he took a spontaneous decision to travel to Bangalore to meet Padukone,and together they resolved to be part of the solution. Two years later,the Olympic Gold Trust was formed.

Collecting funds was not difficult,he says. At the first gathering they addressed,they got Rs 25 lakh in cheques in three flat minutes. The trickle often turned to a flood as corporate heads loosened purse strings,much more owing to the credibility of the two champion sportsmen. The Bajaj group made the largest contribution till date of Rs 1 crore. But after I met Prakash and we formed this,we were still aware of the fact that good sportspersons dont necessarily make good administrators or organisers, Sethi says. The bigger challenge was how to spend the kitty.

The initiative meandered for a few years,till Rasquinha graduated with a marketing and strategy degree from the Indian School of Business,Hyderabad,in what seemed like perfect timing. The former Olympian was summoned to a discussion on the Monday after his graduation in 2009. I took a few days to decide since I had a regular corporate job in hand,but I knew that I was excited about this,and wanted to join, he says.

First up,he went about addressing an issue that had bothered him for the longest: why did Indian sportspersons struggle so badly against injuries when India boasted of some of the best medics in the world? Boxers training at Patiala were assigned a full-time residential medic,Dr Nikhil Latey,who is also an OGQ member. The Mumbaikar went about busting myths all supplements are proteins; minerals and vitamins are the same with as much gusto as he expended on repairing the delicate bones and tendons bruised from the nastiness of the contact sport. He also helped purge the bachelor pads at Patiala of packets of Maggi that the boxers often had to avoid the greasy food offered to them at the national camps.

Rasquinhas own gang comprises his research team of Janit Desai,who dabbled at mutual funds in Mumbai and detested it; and Vaibhav Tandon,who graduated from IIT,Roorkee,joined a bank,and hated it. A classmate recommended an OGQ position for research, Tandon says,adding,Id worked on a sports-based website before and I was excited,but my parents were hopeful this interest would die away. Since his father played billiards and Sethi was an icon,Tandon convinced them of his new profile. Indian sport can be inspiring and frustrating,but I love this job of researching potential medallists, he says.

OGQs selection process is thorough. A few athletes might apply for funds,but its scouts make the selection after scanning all the junior tournaments,and have their ear to the ground. Even rejections merit 20-page assessment reports. An application from an Indian sailor was scanned meticulously,her scores and rankings extrapolated against the worlds top-50,and her international performances and average scores over the years taken into account,before it was concluded that she didnt stand a chance. Rasquinha believes in a carrot-and-stick policy. Well go all the way for someone whos showing results,but if anyone stagnates or is complacent,we revise our fund-grants, Rasquinha says.

Such is the dysfunctionality of Indian sport babudom that even star athletes need all help. Even Saina Nehwal. OGQ had to step in to fund the travel and her stay for many tournaments,including the Hong Kong Open last year where she won her last Super Series title. They also get odd requests. An application from a wrestler who believed OGQ could help him meet Dara Singh and a clutch of WWE stars was turned down. Well seek all the expertise but WWE stars wasnt possible, says Rasquinha,a smile hidden in his deadpan voice.

OGQs first athlete was Gagan Narang,who joined soon after he qualified for the Beijing Olympics. The team has closely followed the ups and downs of its mascots funding Saina Nehwals Hong Kong trip as well as monitoring her ankle injury rehab thereafter; pushing shooter Tejaswani Sawant to win a World Championship medal as well as gently forming a circle of support around her after the death of a parent. OGQ is about emotion at its core. And funders seek no tangible returns from their contributions,just the satisfaction and pride of having Indians win medals, Rasquinha says.

The anecdotes that OGQ members tell you are littered with personal experiences of near-misses. While Rasquinha had watched the Indians concede leads and go down repeatedly in hockey,another director Rakesh Khanna remembers visiting PT Ushas house and wondering why a certificate that announced she won 4th place at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was prominently displayed in the drawing room. It wasnt difficult to sense this tale of incomplete destiny when OGQ decided to fund a gymnasium for the Usha School of Athletics in Calicut to ensure 800m runner Tintu Luka didnt fall short of what was unavailable to her mentor. We fill in the gaps whether its funding exposure trips not sponsored by state federations or equipment or travel. Also we deliver with good speed,and ensure athletes face minimal stress, Rasquinha says.

Rasquinha and Desai also stumbled on the idea of Power Your Champion where some of the billion Indians could actually make a difference. If a million people give Rs 100 a month,it can fund 200 athletes! In cities,people spend that much on two meals, Rasquinha says.

Expenses on players are varied. Young hurdler Gayathry Govindrajan needed decent shoes and spikes,as her first press photographs in action on the tracks last year revealed her racing in some very lousy footwear. The team also handed her a cellphone since they found it impossible to track her down. The athletes are a mixed bunch. They include the contemplative thrower Vikas Gowda,dismissed as a all potential,no wins athlete,who proved Indian officialdom wrong at the Commonwealth Games last year; OGQ is funding his training stint in a US academy in Phoenix. We backed Gowda in training at Arizona, Rasquinha says,but adds that the biggest challenge as far as the discus thrower was concerned was getting a T-shirt to kit him out in casuals. The biggest available size in India was XXXL quite inadequate for the 6 ft 9 incher.

Among the athletes is also exuberant boxer Suranjoy Singh,who won a walkover in the CWG final and somersaulted in joy,straining his back in the process,earning a reprimand from Rasquinha. One of their challenges is to rebuild his confidence after his loss at the Asian Games. Like Saina Nehwal,he tends to over-train and has to be told to slow down because he is petrified of putting on weight, says Rasquinha.

The goal they are all working towards,though,is the London Olympics they wouldnt want to be distracted from the 6 grams of gold,though silvers and bronze are more than welcome in a medal-parched nation. Funders are convinced they will continue right up to Rio de Janeiro in 2016,with senior athletes needing Rs 20 lakh per annum and juniors around Rs 10 lakh a year till then.

A month after India won the cricket World Cup and the revelry spilled all over Marine Drive,Rakesh Khanna,a sports-lover and OGQ director,made an impassioned plea: We saw the whole city dance in the streets when cricket won; I think a true victory for this nation in sport will be when people go out and celebrate on the streets similarly for Olympic medals.

Theres no mistaking the power of a gold medal to rouse a billion.