Whether it is Shani Davis becoming the first black male to win an olympic gold, Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway becoming the first Alpine skier to win four career gold medals or Janica Kostelic becoming the first woman alpine skiier to achieve the same feat (30 minutes after Aamodt achieved his feat!), there is no dirth of historic feats.

I regret not being able to watch all this action on TV. My TV here at the hotel just has a disturbed Ten Sports. No ESPN, STAR Sports or Zee Sports (though I do not know if any of the stations are covering the games).

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.

Joey Cheek won the 500 metres speed skating gold. With it he won $25,000 cash bonus.

What did he do with it?

As you know, there’s been some media but not a ton [about] the Darfur region of Sudan [where] there has been tens and tens of thousands of people killed. My government has labeled it a genocide, and so I will be donating money specifically to refugees in Chad where there are over 60,000 children who have been displaced from their homes….

Yes he donated the money and urged fellow Olympians to do the same. For him it is not about the money.

I have been blessed by competing in the Olympics in speedskating. If I retired yesterday I would have gotten everything in the world from speedskating and from competing in the Olympics. So for me to walk away today with a gold medal is amazing…. And so, I’ve always felt that if I ever did something big like this I wanted to be prepared to give something back.

Sportsmen are role models, yes. Sportsmen can also make a read difference. They enjoy a platform from which they can impact several lives by their examples, and setting examples. In India, Tendulkar donates to many charitable causes away from the spotlight. Schumacher made some praiseworthy donations last year. Steve Waugh has set an example in Calcutta.

Sport can indeed make differences in more ways than one.

Hat tip - Road to Torino blog.

52 year old Anne Abernathy or Grandma Luge, as she is better known, has pulled out of the Olympics because of a wrist injury.

Abernathy has a lot to be proud about. Reports CNN:

She has also built up a cult following of luge fans around the world, having beaten cancer and bounced back from a string of injuries including 12 operations on her knee.

She was appearing at her sixth Olympics in Torino after a career that began in Calgary in 1988 and carried the flag for her country in Friday’s opening ceremony. She became the oldest female Winter Olympian when she competed aged 48 in Utah four years ago. The previous title-holder was Canada’s Edwina Chamier, an Alpine skier who took to the slopes of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936. But Abernathy was not the oldest competitor at the Games — that distinction goes to 54-year-old U.S. curler Scott Baird.

As Grandma Luge says, she is an inspiration to a lot of women, specially to those above 50:

It’s a big deal for a lot of women that someone over 50 is going out there and doing it.

Chad Hedrick has won a gold medal. He has vouched to win 4 more. If he manages the same, he will emulate Eric Heiden who won 5 gold medals in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

An opening ceremony described as filled with rhythm, passion and speed to showcase Italian culture kicked off the Olympics. Italian cross-country skier Stefania Belmondo lit the Olympic flame.

Winter Olympics, 2006 kicks off in Turin today. Already there have been athletes testing positive. CNN explains some sports being at the Winter Olympics.