Beef Vindaloo

India’s Olympic Games training programme officially kicked off today in New Delhi with all the athletes arriving for the training camp that begins from tomorrow. As part of the new programme, the organising committee has decided to streamline the number of athletes going to the games and will be sending only those atheletes who would be assured to bring home a medal. As a result, India would be sending only a team of 10 atheletes for the Olympic games in a sport where we are assured of a bronze medal – Kabaddi.

“There has been numerous cases of atheletes being part of the Olympic contingent only to disappear on landing in the country,” said Romesh Katarnaik of the Foreign Office, “this has proven to be a Foreign Office nightmare and a diplomatic embarrasment as a result of which we are closely monitoring our athletes and are trimming down this year’s numbers.” Katarnaik says that India’s delegation has become a bit of a joke in international sports circles with even countries like Hong Kong, that has a population less than that of Delhi securing more medals than India. “We have decided that instead of spreading our resources thin, we would only look at entering events where we can win instead of hoping for the best. We are playing to our strengths purely.”

The Indian Olympic Committee therefore felt that Kabaddi would be the only sport that Indian would take part in. The IOC had lobbied strongly against a vote to remove Kabaddi from the Olympic Games roster in favour of the much more demanding and challenging sport of ballroom dancing. “If we have fought to hard to keep this sport on the list then it is only fair that we prove that we are good at it,” Katarnaik said. If India do bring back a Bronze in this event, that would take our total Olympic medal tally to six, which is quite close to what every American athelete won in last year’s event.

But the bookmakers, for one, are not placing their hopes with the Indian team. After rumours of Chinese and Japanese athletes training for Kabaddi were confirmed, the best hope that India has is for winning a Bronze. One bookmaker who spoke to us under condition of anonymity said that “it comes down to India and Pakistan. Pakistan would definitely fail the doping test so that means we will win the Bronze but higher than that is absolutely impossible.” The IOC though are sticking with their athletes. “India is a developing country and it is not fair to compare us to Chinese and Japanese athletes. After 60 years of being a free nation, we are able to win a medal and that is call for support and not degradation.”

So a billion people’s hopes now rest of 10 people who could, perhaps, possibly, if nothing else goes wrong come home with a Bronze medal. “If that happens that would help us morally to look forward to the next Olympics games to win another medal. Because, by then, Budhia would be able to take part.”

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