Pakistan ended the Tokyo Olympics with a dismal performance after its athletes failed to win a single medal. None of the athletes managed to reach the podium and prolonged the nation’s chance to gain glory at the global sporting event. Two athletes managed to reach the finals – javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem and weightlifter Talha Talib. They entered the final rounds but could not break the stranglehold. Shooter Gulfam nearly missed out on the final spot in the 10-metre air pistol. The athletes have still received praise for their efforts and for giving hope to a nation where sports have been neglected.
The poor show at the Olympics only confirms the debilitating decline in the overall sporting industry. Pakistan has now not won an Olympic medal since the Barcelona games in 1992 and, given the way our sports are fast becoming the laughing stock of the world, it seems as if our total tally will not exceed 10 anytime soon. That once again begs the question of just what it is going to take to make this country successful at sports like the old days. And it is shocking that no relevant authority has yet figured out the answer that is literally staring everybody in the face.
Our sports have declined because we have, for some strange reason, continued to rely on individual, naturally endowed talent for success on the field. There was a time when such things were possible. In those times we did indeed rule the world in a number of sports; hockey, squash, cricket. But now things have changed and when the world was changing we chose not to change with it. The result is that while even regional countries have structured their many sports authorities according to modern technical, data-driven standards, we have remained as we were. Still, it is mostly someone close to someone in power who gets to run the most important sports boards. Our fall from grace is made much worse by the fact that nothing is still being done about it.
The Pakistan Sports Board and the Pakistan Olympic Association, headed by decadent leaderships, remain hollow institutions that have failed miserably at promoting sports and supporting athletes. Lack of support, coupled with nepotism and power politics, has vitiated our sports culture. The absence of the country’s once-internationally-renowned hockey team from this year’s Olympics is a case in point — despite hockey being our national sport.
One wonders why a staggering amount of Rs440 million remained unutilised and returned to the government by the sports board when it should have been used to provide professional training and resources to our competing athletes and to revitalise the disintegrating sport of hockey. Yet, after Talha’s performance both institutions had the audacity to resort to a blame game of pointing fingers at each other’s negligence.
The unfortunate reality is that many of our previous contenders have to resort to menial demoralising jobs in order to make ends meet. It is the job of our top leadership, especially the PM who is ironically a sportsman himself, to appoint visionary, sincere and patriotic professionals at the helm of sports institutions across the country. Anyone with a fairly rudimentary understanding of the sports scene in Pakistan knows that development at the grassroots is essential for long-term progress.
