Daily Times

LAHORE: Last week the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ended in a blaze of colour with an exuberant closing ceremony as Tokyo took up the baton promising to host the next Olympic Games in a best possible way. After a rollercoaster fortnight which mixed off-field hitches with compelling sporting drama, Olympics chief Thomas Bach hailed a ‘marvellous’ Games in the Brazilian city. “These were marvellous Olympic Games in the marvellous city,” said Bach, as he declared the Games closed and the Olympic flame was extinguished. A record number of countries participated in a record number of sports. More than 10,500 athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), including first time entrants Kosovo and South Sudan, took part in the mega event. With 306 sets of medals, the Summer Games featured 28 Olympic sports, including rugby sevens and golf, which were added by the International Olympic Committee in 2009. These sporting events took place at 33 venues in the host city, and at five venues in the cities of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasília (Brazil’s capital), and Manaus. Rio became the first South American city to host the Summer Olympics. These were the first Games held in a Portuguese-speaking country.

At the closing ceremony, thousands of fans and athletes donned ponchos on a wet and windy night for a colourful festival of Brazilian culture and music with bursts of spectacular fireworks. Smiling and waving athletes danced into the Maracana Stadium taking selfies as Rio’s 16-day Summer Games closed ahead of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a comical cameo as Nintendo video game character Super Mario as Tokyo set out its stall for 2020. Security scares and logistical problems were a feature of South America’s first Olympics, held against the backdrop of Brazil’s political and economic crisis. Swathes of empty seats caused disquiet but the Games also witnessed the last hurrahs of both Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps, who both lived up to their billing. Bolt sealed the sprint ‘triple triple’ in his final Games, reaching a record-equalling nine gold medals with his third consecutive 100m, 200m and 4x100m sweep. Swim legend Phelps took his unmatched career haul to 23 gold medals with another five in Rio – plus a silver, after his loss to former childhood fan Joseph Schooling. From the dizzying gymnastics heights of African-American Simone Biles to Indian wrestler Sakshi Malik and Brazilian golden girl Rafaela Silva in judo – Rio proved the ground-breaking Olympics for women.

For China, the world’s most populous country, it was the worst Olympics for 20 years — especially sobering after topping the standings at Beijing 2008 and finishing second in 2012.China brought to Rio a youthful team with an average age of 24, the lowest of the last three Olympics. A string of below-par performances saw India win just two medals, fewer than the six clinched during their best-ever performance in London four years earlier. And police seized passports, phones and computers in a raid on the Irish Olympic office, following the arrest of Irish International Olympic Committee member Patrick Hickey over an alleged black market tickets scam.

Rio won the right to host the Games in 2009, when the economy was booming and millions were pushing into the middle class. One of the major concerns for Brazilians is what will be the final cost of the Games for a country and how much they actually helped improve the city’s infrastructure. Many Rio residents could not afford tickets to events, leaving them feeling on the sidelines of the city’s biggest undertaking. But after gruelling sixteen days, Rio de Janeiro cast aside early struggles with empty venues, security scares and a mysterious green diving pool to throw a huge Carnival-like party in the end to conclude the Games on a happy note. For all the troubles before and during the Games, Rio, no doubt, will surely be remembered for great sporting moments.

A country of 200 million with seven athletes only: Anybody who spent watching the Olympics might not realise that sport is played in Pakistan. The sum total of Pakistan’s Olympic achievement since 1947 is ten medals. Eight in hockey, including three golds, one each in wrestling and boxing. Pakistan haven’t won a medal for 24 years. Worse, Pakistan is the most populous nation to fail to win a medal in Rio. This isn’t the performance of a country that values sport. Most of us would have already forgotten the athletes who represented Pakistan at the Rio Olympics. The country was represented by seven athletes, who competed in the qualification phases of their respective events and none of them went beyond this stage and neither did they look close to competing with their highly skilled, trained and battle-hardened opponents. Since conclusion of the Rio Olympics, one is watching the media and some impassioned followers ruing the shambolic state of sports in the country and the general apathy of the government towards this area but this anguish will remain shortlived. Rio 2016 has been no different from London 2012, Beijing 2008 or any of the preceding Olympics going back to Atlanta 1996, with Pakistan returning empty-handed from each of the last six Olympics. Each time, there has been a hue and cry over the dismal state of affairs but the fact is that Pakistan continue to nosedive further as time passes and one isn’t even sure if they have hit their lowest point yet.

Pakistan is a sports-loving nation that once prided itself on producing extraordinary athletes, mostly in the game of hockey and squash. Squash is the sport Pakistan has been most successful in. Between 1982 and 1997, first Jahangir Khan and then Jansher Khan won every British Open, the premier tournament in the world game. Pakistanis in squash, the toughest of racket games, looked invincible. Since 1997, five years after Pakistan’s last Olympic medal in any sport, Pakistan’s superiority in squash is no more. Like the Olympics and hockey, squash has nothing to showcase since the 1990s. Despite all this, Pakistanis love sports.

While cricket remains hugely popular, all other sports have seen a big decline in the past two decades. The reason is the corporatisation of sports in Pakistan, with the Government paying almost no attention to nurturing talented players and providing them sporting facilities and guidance. Perhaps the biggest reason for the extraordinary decline in sports in Pakistan is a lack of funding and vision. Pakistan’s sports budget is the lowest in South Asia, less than that of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and even Afghanistan. Government officials and private sector are not interested in investing in anything other than cricket. In dilapidated gyms and crumbling sports fields, Pakistan athletes lament the outdated equipment and obsolete training methods, which leave them struggling against foreign competitors who adhere to latest science-based techniques. National sports federations cannot afford to hire good coaches who are familiar with modern training techniques. Athletes are truly frustrated because mostly coaches are not literate, and they have been teaching what they taught 30 years back. Without infrastructure a lot can be done, but without techniques no one can win.

For women athletes, the conditions are even worse. They are not allowed to train outdoors, and there is hardly any familial support for talented young girls. It is said that societal barriers are coming down for women, but many women athletes don’t agree with that. Most young girls in the deeply conservative Muslim nation are pressured by their families to stop playing sports, while those with family backing face the wrath of their communities. The grassroots system is almost non-existent, children in schools rarely play a sport that is not cricket, and top athletes seldom compete against the world’s best as cash-strapped federations cannot afford to send them abroad.

The Pakistan Sports Board was embroiled in conflict for much of the last four years with the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), which meant that rather than focusing on the provision of requisite facilities and infrastructure for the athletes in the build-up to Rio, energy was spent on scheming for power and clout locally and internationally. No doubt it is high time that the Government should run the grossly mismanaged PSB like a proper institution for the benefit of sports.

Governments all over the world keep sports and education as their top priority, build infrastructure, hold talent development programmes for players and promote medical sciences in sports to compete the world of sports. India spend billions of dollars on sports, but in Pakistan it is totally opposite because sports are not our priority. To rise from nothing, against all adversity, and reach the pinnacle, that is a dream that is as powerful today as it has ever been. Olympians are marked by their heroics, their endeavour, their struggle against the odds. Pakistan has no Olympians of note for our present generation. The Rio Olympics should be a wake-up call for the government, and the country’s sporting authorities. Tokyo 2020 will be no different if the current crisis in Pakistan sports continues.