India performance in olympics

India won more medals at the London Olympics than ever before. A total of six: two silvers, four bronze and no gold. This was a great achievement for all the athletes involved, better than the pre-Games target of five, and evidence Indias sporting record is improving. But lets face it, the bigger picture is far from glowing: for a country of over 1.2 billion people that boasts one of the worlds largest economies, this is an unimpressive tally. You have to scroll way down before you get to India in the Olympic rankings: its 55th out of 79, below the likes of North Korea (20), the tiny Caribbean archipelago of Trinidad and Tobago (47) and nowhere near fellow BRIC economies. (Note that the official medal rankings take into account also the type of medal, so gold is worth more than silver and so on.) If you adjust the medal tally to its population and the size of its economy, the result is even less remarkable: India comes last in both tables. A total of six medals for India averages to one medal for roughly every 207 million inhabitants. Compare that to China, with one medal for every 15.5 million people (for a total of 87 medals) or the U.S., with one medal for every three million Americans. Adjusted to its gross domestic product, Indias medal haul is as disappointing, with the lowest ratio of Olympic medals to GDP size. With an annual GDP of $1.848 trillion, India is the worlds 10th- largest economy, according to 2011 World Bank data. Yet its number of medals is far lower that of countries with economies of comparable size. Take Russia: although its GDP is marginally larger than Indias, it won 82 medals at this years Olympics.

So whats the reason for Indias disproportionately poor performance at the Summer Olympics? This is a question many have grappled with in recent days. Its tempting, from a distance, to guess India doesnt care about competing in the Olympics. But thats not the case: The Indian public eagerly followed the Games, cheering on their athletes, even in obscure sports like 25-meter rapid fire pistol shooting. The biggest problem is that Indian athletes dont enjoy much financial or institutional support. Although this is improving, thanks to growing public investment and non-profit initiatives like the Olympic Gold Quest and the Mittal Champions Trust, this is in no way comparable to the kind of backing athletes enjoy in top-ranked Olympic countries. The correlation between the amount of money invested in athletes and the number of medals is very strong, argues Geet Sethi, a nine-time world billiards champion as well as head and founder of the Olympic Gold Quest, an organization that scouts and trains athletes for the Games. For instance, in 1998 our sports budget was 1.5 billion rupees ($27 million) while Chinas was 15 billion rupees. China won 10 times the number of medals India won at the 1998 Asian Games, he said in an interview ahead of the Games. Olympic shooter Abhinav Bindra, who won gold in Beijing, agrees the room for improvement is plenty: I think in sport in India a lot needs to still be done. I do believe that we have an abundance of talent but that talent needs to be nurtured right from a young age and we need to have world-class infrastructure, world-class coaching and training right from a young age. In an interview with India Real Time, he described China as a good example of how investing in sports translates into Olympic victories. Their rise has been phenomenal, he says.

Writing for the Atlantic, Max Fisher drew attention to the absence of a grass-roots sporting culture in the country. Citing an academic paper, he noted how huge swathes of India population dont count as potential medal winners as they effectively never participate in athletics. Theyre excluded by poor childhood health, physical isolation by poor transportation from the athletics centers in the big cities, or often because they simply are not sufficiently aware of the Olympics or the sports involved, he writes. Besides, India does not have the Communist history that Russia and China shared. Some argue that, over the years, this has translated into a sporting culture that is conducive to Olympic victory by making it easier to channel resources to athletes. The big exception to Indias dismal sporting record is cricket, in which India dominates. But some say this is part of the problem: the country is so cricket-obsessed that, in the mind of the public as well as sponsors, little space is left for others. Let us accept the truth, said sports writer Nirmal Shekar in a column published in the Hindu, we are a one-sport nation. The question of why India fares so poorly at the Olympics, noted Mr. Shekar, arises only when the Games are on, for only about two weeks every four years. The rest of the time we are obsessed with, worship and shamelessly pay obeisance to that one sport, cricket, argues Mr. Shekar. And when the Olympics come around, we are saddened, angry and aghast that we are not able to revel in reflected glory. We are ashamed that countries with one millionth of our population pick up gold medals. These guys have done us in, we say. We believed so much in them and they have let us down.

But the truth is, it is we who let them down. For, we dont care about them for three years and eleven and-a-half months, he writes.

Both Great Britain and India came up with their best Games performances in London, but the hosts were placed third while India finished in poor 55th place. Expenditure during preparation may explain the difference: Britain's spend on Games preparations were nine times more than India's... India might have won less than a tenth of Great Britain's total medals at the London Games but something is similar between the Olympic performance of India and its former coloniser. Ads by Google

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Although the gap in the medal tallies is huge, the London Games witnessed both teams' best performance for more than 100 years. Why has our best taken us to 55th place while the British team came third in the overall medal tally? A comparison of both countries' expenditure in preparing athletes for the Olympics might be worthwhile in understanding the enormous difference in results. UK Sports is the British government body responsible for disbursing government funding in Olympics and Paralympic sports. It invests exchequer, national lottery and private sector funding to maximise the international success of British athletes.

For London 2012, UK sports spent a staggering Rs 2,301 crore in preparing the athletes. This is about nine times of India's Olympic expenditure. The four-year funding is awarded on the basis of Olympic cycle and it starts on April 1 of the year immediately following the conclusion of the Games. In India, the ministry of youth affairs and sports launched 'Operation Excellence for London Olympics 2012' - commonly known as OPEX 2012 - to better medal chances. Launched in April 2011, OPEX 2012 lasted for 16 months and 490 days, concluding in July 2012. Based on India's past performance, 16 different disciplines were identified in which Indian athletes were likely to qualify. According to the minutes of the 1st Apex committee meeting, OPEX 2012 was aimed at winning 8-10 medals in different categories. A total of Rs 258.39cr was the budget estimate for this programme, of which 238.39cr was to be spent on preparation and an additional 20 crore for foreign coaches. Although the sum of expenditure in the 16 disciplines on OPEX 2012's official website is 139.39cr, let's assume that the allocated amount is actually spent. Even then our Olympic expenditure is a meagre 11% of Britain's. It's also worthwhile to compare discipline-wise expenditure. The numbers indicates that higher spending definitely increases medal chance. The bulk of India's expenditure has gone into shooting, boxing, hockey, athletics, wrestling, table tennis, gymnastics and badminton. The high expenditure in athletics and hockey is also because of significantly higher number of athletes. In the remaining six disciplines, India got medals in four. Gymnastics was perhaps our worst bet as even after spending 14cr we failed to qualify. On the other hand, badminton fetched us a medal even though we spent 13cr in training the athletes. It's also interesting to note that India spent more than the British in shooting, wrestling and table tennis. In these three games, Great Britain managed a gold in shooting while we won silver and bronze in shooting and wrestling each. Ads by Google

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So what is the cost per medal? With Rs 250cr total expenditure our cost per medal is significantly higher than Britain. India spent Rs 43cr for each of its medal while the same cost is Rs 35cr for Britain. India, Great Britain Games Expenses: A Comparison Discipline India Great Britain % of Great Britain Shooting 44 21 204 Boxing 27 83 33 Hockey 21 131 16 Athletics 16 219 7 Wrestling 16 13 126 Table Tennis 15 11 138 Gymnastics# 14 94 14 Badminton 13 65 20 Swimming 13 219 6 Judo 12 65 18 Weightlifting 11 12 94 Taekwondo 9 42 22 Archery 9 38 24 Rowing 9 238 4 Sailing 8 200 4 Tennis* 2 0 NA Total (Rs cr; GBP = INR 87) 238 2,301 10