Every one expects China to do well in the 2008 Olympics including me. A question of course is ‘exactly how well will they do?’ How close will they come to the USA in the medals tally and will they even topple the USA?

China had a great Asian games but the people who matter are pushing the athletes much more. That is not all which is being done though. China is focussing on the grandeur as well - so the Olympic torch will climb the Everest. Beijing 2008 is being taken very seriously by China as we all know and we are seeing what China is doing towards this end as these news items come to the fore.

While Sydney 2000 was one of the most spectacular in recent Olympic history, Beijing 2008 might just be the most memorable. More than the boost to the rapidly growing economy, Beijing 2008 provides the chance for China to come closer to the world via the quickest of ways - sports. So, China should focus on building and growing upon an image which will reap tremendous long term returns.

The medals tally will be just one of the many things the world will be watching and how much China is able to to seize Beijing 2008 at this interesting juncture in it’s growth will be fascinating to follow.

The 10th Pan Pacific Swimming Championship is over. The highlight was the number of world records broken - six which is huge considering the number of swimmers missing the event.

The biggest star of the meet was Michael Phelps who makes a statement of sorts and sets up things for next year’s World Championships and then the Beijing Olympics nicely where swimming is concerned.

SI has more:

In Victoria, he lowered his world marks in the 200-meter individual medley and 200 butterfly, and led off the world record-setting 400 freestyle relay.

“It’s pretty much the first meet where I have been happy coming off of last summer,” he said.

The way records have been broken in swimming in the last couple of years has been astounding. With many more young stars coming through, the records will keep tumbling, possibly even faster in the next couple of years. A few young guns from Times Colonist:

Emerging American star Cullen Jones, who reportedly signed an endorsement deal with Nike potentially worth $2 million, won the men’s 50-metres freestyle in a meet record 21.84 seconds …

… Tae Hwan Park, the 16-year-old Korean high school sensation, won his second gold medal of the meet — the first two golds ever won by Korea at a major international swim meet. Park took the men’s 1,500 metres in 15:06.11 while 17-year-old Ryan Cochrane of Victoria, who graduated last spring from Claremont Secondary, turned in a solid showing by placing fourth in 15:13.44.

Cullen Jones is already being called the Tiger Woods of swimming and though that may be an exaggeration, the younger brigade cannot be ignored.

As far as the medal tally goes, US was the handsome winner. However, Australia wasn’t in full force for the event but do not forget China who finished number seven and had measly two medals to show for their participation was very weak as well.

The stage for some tough battles in the pool has been set.

That’s what Abhinav Bindra achieved as Telegraph reports:

Abhinav Bindra overcame back pain to become the first Indian shooter to win a World Championship gold in Zagreb on Monday. Dr Karni Singh’s silver in 1962 was the best by an Indian in a World Championship meet before Monday.

That no Indian had ever won a gold before is not surprising. After all, the shooting boom in India is not very old. The Indian shooting contingent for Beijing is looking stronger with each passing day. We have the likes of Narang, Samaresh Jung, Rathore and young guns like Bindra.

We disappointed tremendously last time in the Olympics but it will be shocking if we don’t win a few medals via shooting in Beijing. Here’s hoping the shooting contingent does India proud and I don’t have to write some thing on this topic again.

Update: Read Indian Express’ Navneet Singh write on Bindra coming back from the dead.

In 1936, Hitler’s Germany finished with 11 golds and 33 total medals more than the next best - USA. As we inch closer to Beijing, we realise how real the USA versus China battle is going to be.

Every sport has the Chinese imprint on it now. As 2008 draws closer, the imprint grows bigger. There was the world record in 110 meter hurdles a few days back. Now, it is the turn of tennis. Tennis has already seen the Chinese women take the doubles at two earlier grand slams this season - Australian Open and Wimbledon. Now, they Chinese are raising the bar in singles as well.

As CNN reports:

China will now play in the eight-team World Group in 2007 while twice champions Germany were relegated to the second tier of the team competition.

The victory was another first in a breakthrough year in which Li became the first Chinese player to reach the singles quarterfinals at a grand slam and Zheng Jie and Yan Zi secured the country’s first major titles in the women’s doubles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.

That Germany is being replaced by China in the world group bears symbolism more than any thing else. The Olympics have always been the global stage where political statements have been made as this piece from The Economist [Via India Uncut] talked on among other things:

Over its long history, success at the Olympics has usually been a fairly accurate measure of global political power. Although the world now remembers the snub that Jesse Owens delivered to Nazi theories of racial superiority, the Germans came top of the Olympic medal table in 1936, reflecting the Nazi regime’s growing power. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly struggled to gain a symbolic victory, by winning the most medals at the Olympics. Already a similar, politically charged battle for supremacy between America and China looks likely in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

If you keep your eyes and ears open, the results have started showing for China. It was one thing to achieve supremacy in an era when sport wasn’t as competitive, hence standards not as tough in 1936. It is a completely different ball game to compete against a super power like USA in the sporting arena - a country which has been very much unbeatable. That is essentially China’s challenge in the world stage as well, isn’t it? To compete with the best in the world markets in products by reducing the cost of production while mass producing as good if not better goods?

History has shown - what you do at the world stage, you do it first at the Olympics. So, 2008 will be a time to make statements. The process was started when the athletes and sports persons were nurtured. The results have already started flowing in.

Sharad Yadav directly protests against India hosting the Commonwealth Games. Reports Rediff:

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Yadav said participation in the Games is wasteful expenditure and a country like India can ill-afford to spend such a huge amount of money for a few medals. “I understand that the Indian Olympic Committee, headed by Suresh Kalmadi, spent Rs 23 crore on an eleven-minute song and drama sequence, in which several film actors took part, at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games…

“What is the big deal in hosting games like the Commonwealth Games in India? What do we gain, barring a few medals and some IOA officials having a good time? I believe that the huge amount of money that would be spent on hosting the Games could have been used for giving grants to Delhi University and other academic institutions of excellence. We could have created more IITs and IIMs with that fund.

So essentially, Yadav raises two points:

1) Public money should not be wasted.

2) Public money should be used in activities for development of the nation.

(more…)

Manmohan Singh has said that India will bid for the Asian Games 2014 and Olympics 2016 reports New Kerala. Can we build infrastructure to host an Asian Games so soon? We have the Commonwealth Games in 2011 and so infrastructure would be boosted any way. So Asian Games 2014 is possible if India pursue it seriously.

Olympics in 2016? Forget the infrastructure for a minute. Lobbying and a lot of effort is also required to host the games apart from initial financial expenditure for promoting an Olympic city. Even then cities lose out. Also the competition is immense and India entering fray right now for 2016 would already find a few counries ahead of it. Maybe it can be a bidder in name (which would again require serious financial expenditure). India can go for hosting an Olympic in the future but not as early as 2016.

Canadian Duff Gibson created history when he became the oldest individual gold medalist at the Winter Olympics at the age of 39 (Men’s skeleton title). He broke the record of Magnar Solberg who was 35 when he won his last gold. The oldest athlete to win it in a team event remains, as CNN reports:

The oldest Winter champion for any event is Jay O’Brien, who was 48 when he won four-man bobsleigh gold for the United States at the 1932 Games in Lake Placid.

At the summer games, Oscar Swahn was the part of the Running Deer shooting team at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics which won gold. . He was 64-years and 258-days old. Incidentally he is also the oldest olympian. As the official Olympic site reports:

After World War I, Swahn returned to the Olympics -at the age of 72. He won a silver medal in the running deer double-shot team event and also competed in the individual and team single-shot contests.

With India’s population, it surprises many that India is not a force at the Olympics. R.J.Elliott wonders the same in a comment in Aaman’s recent article:

I’ve always found it a bit baffling that India, with over one billion citizens, doesn’t seem to have much success in either the Winter OR the Summer Olympics…and that they don’t seem to have many (any?) nationals playing at the professional level in the US in any of the four major American sports. Surely there is a 7-foot 6-inch Indian fellow out there who would like to make millions playing in the NBA. Or a 35-pound Indian who would make a good offensive lineman in the NFL. But where are they?

Winter Olympics

Most commonwealth nations have performed poorly at the Winter Olympics. Apart from Canada who had won 31golds and was at number 10 in the all time Winter Olympic medal table before the games started, Commonwealth nations have had little to show. Poor performances at the Winter Olympics is not an India specific or South Asia specific phenomena.

Great Britain have won 8 golds in all, and among them are medals from an era when not many nations competed in the Olympics. Australia hadn’t won a medal before 1994. Australia loves its sport passionately and evidence of that is its improvement in the Winter Olympics. 40 athletes are competing for Australia at the Torino games, almost double the size in recent times. However, I might add that the latest gold medal winner for Australia, Dale Begg-Smith, is Canadian born.

What about the other nations? New Zealand is at number 36 with a solo silver in a tally of 38 nations which had won medals before the current Olympics started. Countries like Norway, Austria, Finland and Sweden have extreme cold conditions unlike a Great Britain or Australia which explains the vast difference in medal counts in winter sports.

The fact that India has sent out 4 participants for the Torino Games is a big enough achievement considering the bare facts. India does have the Himalayas, but how many skiing resorts exist?

Summer Olympics

The wonder cannot be put to rest with the Winter Olympics, however. With a population of 1.1 billion, India still has not managed to win a single individual gold at the Summer Olympics.The reason which is usually given? India is a one sport nation.

Is India really a one sport(cricket) nation?

Cricket is played on every street in India. Go to the cities,villages, sea beaches, deserts or mountains - everywhere you will find children playing cricket. Why then can India not produce cricketers who are better than cricketers of the rest of the world combined, if all its sporting resources are going to cricket?

To begin with, there is hardly any infrastructure, and talent is not tapped. If it is tapped, it is not groomed well enough. This has changed recently with cricketers coming from outside the major cities like Sehwag, R.P.Singh and Suresh Raina. The fact remains though, that for every Sehwag there are countless kids playing with rubber balls whose talent is not tapped and do not know what playing with a proper cricket ball is.

At the first class level in India, there is no support system for the players. A former India player told me once when I went to meet him that his biggest mistake was that he did not finish education before going on to pursue cricket. Obviously, if he had the qualifications, he would have retired much earlier than he did, trying to earn a proper living.

Hardly 5-6 players can command a place in the national team for a span of 10 years. There is money in the game yes, but is there really money then to support the careers of at least the state level cricketers? The way the money is currently distributed, the answer is no.

The plight of other sports in India

Rajyawardhan Rathore, silver medalist at Athens, 2004, in the Men’s double trap event did it with an attitude few people have or are expected to have. He did not receive much support. Despite that he did not criticize the authorities and made the best of what he got, staying undeterred. When people see a Sania Mirza in India sport today, they do not realize the expenses players have to deal with when they are not ‘stars’.

To gain points a player has to travel far and wide and for it the player requires money. Add to that the money required to be paid to the best coaches from the world for proper grooming. Sponsors are necessary. The tragedy is, sponsors only come in once the player has become a star or is on the verge of becoming a star. Even after some one has achieved success, a sponsor can back out as was the case with Konery Humpy, India’s finest young chess talent. (though chess is not an Olympic sport, this shows the difficulties players face)

Why does money and infrastructure need to come up in a country where so many people are poor?

Sport brings in joy which is priceless. The joy the Brazilian kid gets playing football or the Indian counterpart gets hitting a six is unmatched. In that moment he forgets all hardships. Another argument brought up was regarding money invested in sports. Gaurav commented in the same article:

I believe spending money to compete at top athletic events that require insane amount of money is perverted for a country coming to terms with over 300 million people living below poverty.

If India had that attitude, India would not even have had the base for winning the World Cup in 1983. That victory it propelled a cricket craziness in India and money coming in through privatization of broadcasts in the mid 90s, the Wills World Cup happening in 1996. Hosting a big sporting event means the growth of infrastructure, tie ups with companies and jobs to many people. Sport is an industry in itself, even if you leave aside that it also brings joy to many people in the process.

Roger Federer is a kid at heart. Aren’t we all. But this regardin Federer is out of the closet now.

Federer and all Federer fans like me are very excited that Wimbledon will host the 2012 Olympics. Will it be the fitting end to a superb career, the crowning glory when Federer wins the Olympic Gold medal at 30 at then retires in 2012? There is a lot of time to wait but it is already the possibility makes it all very exciting.

Cricinfo has put up this article on cricket and the Olympic games as Lords is likely to be host of the Archery event in 2012.

Apart from the sole Olympic cricket game, 26 first-class cricketers have competed at the Games in other sports.

And the legend of WG Grace has so much more to it:

A teen-aged Grace had actually competed in the National Olympian Games, an early attempt at reviving the Olympics back in 1866. He made a high-speed dash by cab from The Oval to Crystal Palace to win the 440yds hurdles race and dashed back - all while playing for All England against Surrey and apparently with the approval of his captain VE Walker, later to become MCC president.

More on the soley cricket Olympic game was found as I searched the cricinfo archives in this article. I spoke onthe 12 a side games and various side matches being there in cricket in the past and the Olympic game between Great Britan and France, which Great Britan won (scorecard) was a 12 a side game spread over 2 days. The story is amusing as players didnt even know they were taking part in the Olympics!

And so ended the competition. Neither side seemed aware that they had taken part in the Olympics, and the match was only retrospectively formally recognised as being an Olympic contest in 1912, when the International Olympic Committee met to compile the definitive list of all events in the five modern Olympiads up to that point.

Meanwhile, other sports are not new in Lords as cricinfo reports:

Although Lord’s is renowned as the home of cricket, this will not be the first time that it has played host to alternative sports. The ground has rackets and real tennis courts behind the pavilion, while one of Britain’s first running tracks was put in place at the ground in 1837.

A Canadian lacrosse team played an exhibition match at the ground in 1883, while Oxford and Cambridge played their Varsity hockey match on the ground from 1969 to 1991, when the fixture moved to Reading. And even baseball has had a look-in. It hosted the first match on British shores in 1874, and teams from Canada and the USA were frequent visitors until 1914.