Paris Olympics: After a Rs 470 crore plus bill, a lot rides on Indian athletes

The archers have set the ball rolling for India a day before the Paris Olympics is formally inaugurated on the River Seine in what promises to be a unique affair on Friday. Never before has a Games opening ceremony been held outside the stadium, but then, trust the Parisians to do things differently.

 While the buzz since the beginning of the year had been on whether India can reach the double digit of medals for the first time, the Union Sports Ministry will certainly be keeping a hawk’s eye on what is known as return on investment (ROI) in corporate parlance. A staggering Rs 470-plus crores have been spent by the ministry, under its Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) scheme, across the 16 disciplines in which the country will be represented at the Games in the Paris cycle between 2021 and 2024.

 During a recent chat, P.T. Usha, the legendary Indian athlete and president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said that she was optimistic that the contingent would do better than Tokyo but she did not want to quote a number of medals as it would put ‘undue pressure’ on them.  While no one predict a number of medals but can only hope for it – and India had suffered a surprising downswing in their fortunes from London 2012 (six medals) to Rio 2016 (two) – a failure to better their all time high of seven in Tokyo will be seen as nothing short of an embarrassment.

Here’s a breakdown of the outgo for the top four disciplines in which India are nursing medal hopes: athletics: Rs 96.08 crore; badminton: Rs 72.03 crore; boxing:  60.93 crore and shooting:  60.42 crore. The highest amount allotted for an individual athlete’s overseas training, coaches’ fees and injury management is Rs 5.72 crore for Tokyo gold medallist Neeraj Chopra, followed by Rs 5.60 crore for Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, the world No.1 men’s doubles badminton pair till recently and acknowledged as gold medal prospects by none less than national head coach Pulella Gopichand.

 Add to this is an all time high number of officials (147) than athletes (117), a figure which came in for a great degree of flak in the media. It’s a substantial increase from Tokyo, which had a cap on visitors due to the ongoing Covid pandemic then, and many felt it’s almost reminiscent of past experiences of federation officials having a ‘good time’ on government funds, but the IOA shot down such a theory.

 ‘’At IOA, we have embarked on an era where the athletes are at the centre of our preparations. Instead of the usual 3:1 ratio between athletes and support staff, we have worked hard to change it to a slightly better than 1:1 ratio,’’ Usha justified in a statement a week back.

 This apart, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, the new Union Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, charted out in a statement at Rajya Sabha on Thursday that they had given a green signal to the setting up of IOA’s own recovery room at the Games Village with a 13-member medical unit under the stewardship of Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala, a renowned orthopaedic surgeon and Chief Medical Officer of IOA. The medical delegation has, among other specialists, two mental conditioning coaches and a sleep specialist in Dr Monica Sharma to cope with the athletes’ jet lag and changing sleep patterns – along with battling performance anxiety ahead of their competition.

The expectations, hence, will be sky-high this time. The talk of touching double figures in medals is certainly a realistic one and may help the country’s Olympic movement take a giant leap. Anything less than that will open up room for those post-mortems – so here’s hoping for the best.

A break-up of expenditure for Olympics

Archery: Rs 39.18 crore

Athletics: 96.08 crore

Badminton:  72.03 crore

Boxing:  60.93 crore

Equestrian: 95.42 lakh

Golf:  1.74 crore

Hockey:  41.30 crore

Judo:  6.33 crore

Rowing:  3.89 crore

Sailing:  3.78 crore

Shooting:  60.42 crore

Swimming: 3.90 crore

Table Tennis: 12.92 crore

Tennis: 1.67 crore

Weightlifting: 27 crore

Wrestling : 37.80 crore

Total Rs 469.97 crores

(Figures: SAI)