Athletics

Charles M Schultz: Jogging

“Jogging is very beneficial. It’s good for your legs and feet. It’s also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed.”

—Charles M Schultz.

Steve Prefontaine: Work of art

“A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways as they’re capable of understanding.”

—Steve Prefontaine.

Sadiq Khan: Stick with it

“There is a calmness and focus running brings, and it’s not just beneficial for physical health, but mental health too. Stick with it and it can change your life.” – Sadiq Khan, runner and mayor of London.

Robert Pirsig: Equilibrium

“If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in a equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.” – Robert Pirsig, author and philosopher.

Florence Griffith Joyner and John Hanc: Running

“We run because it makes us feel like winners, no matter how slow or how fast we go.”

—Florence Griffith Joyner and John Hanc, Running for Dummies. 

Sarah Lesko: Aging

“I believe in aging. And aging in a badass way.”
—Sarah Lesko, runner and family doctor.

Ashwini Nachappa: Inherent

​”Love for sport is inherent in a child. All we need to do is to nurture it and give it wings. And, for this we need to understand that the mind is not devoid of the body. They work best with each other.” 

—Ashwini Nachappa. 

Ashwini Nachappa: Happy by-product

“An Olympic medal is a happy by-product of a purposefully designed programme that begins in school. Starting, therefore, with an objective of winning medals is holding the wrong end of the stick. By thinking about winning medals first, we will never build a system that naturally and continually throws up great athletes.”

—Ashwini Nachappa.

Should Russia be disbarred from Rio?

The Court for Arbitration in Sports (CAS) has pronounced its verdict.

The seat of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The IAAF-imposed ban on the Russian Athletics Federation stays.

No Russian track-and-field athlete will be competing in Rio—at least, not under their national flag.

The International Olympic Committee will decide the fate of the Russian contingent when it meets today.

IOC headquarters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Lausanne, Switzerland – IOC seat Česky: Lausanne, Švýcarsko – sídlo MOV (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The CAS judgment is non-binding on the Committee.

WADA and predominantly western nations’ Olympic Committees are vocally in favour of a blanket ban on the rogue nation given clear and damning evidence of state-sponsored collusion in doping. They feel that the IOC must exhibit ‘zero–tolerance‘  towards systematic doping by any state. 

Olympic Games 1896, Athens. The International Olympic Committee. From Left to right, standing: Gebhardt (Germany), Guth-Jarkovsky (Bohemia), Kemeny (Hungary), Balck (Sweden); seated : Coubertin (France), Vikelas (Greece & chairman), Butovsky (Russia) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

National Olympic Committees have been banned before—simply not for drug-related scandals.

Collective responsibility should not come at the cost of individual justice—the IOC is seeking a balance.

The Russian public believes that their country is being discriminated against by the Western world. They cannot accept that all their athletes are drugged.

A sanction against all Russian competitors would be unfair to those abiding by the rule book. 

While the IOC has several options before arriving at a final decision, a simple solution would be to allow the Russians to participate—both under their national banner and the Olympic one but have each one of their athletes subjected to both in-competition and out-of-competition testing.

This would allow clean athletes to breathe freely and hopefully deter sportspersons who are doping.

This would also send a strong message to errant national sports federations everywhere that unless they clean up their act, their athletes and their fellow countrymen will be treated like Caesar’s wife—not above suspicion.

Simply leaving the decision to international sports federations burdens them further and not all of them are fully equipped to make an informed decision on the matter.

Whatever the IOC’s decision, there will be no pleasing everyone.

That’s a given.

Related articles

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• Russian national team to include 380 athletes at Rio Olympics – official(tass.ru)
  

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• Russian star Isinbayeva applies to compete in Rio(thehindu.com)
  

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• IOC Affirms Russian Track Ban(wsj.com)
  

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Bhaag, Milkha, Bhaag: Biopic for masses and classes

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Language: Hindi

Directed by:
Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra

Produced by:
Rajiv Tandon
Raghav Bahl
Maitreyee Dasgupta
Madhav Roy Kapur
Rachvin Narula
Shyam P.S
Navmeet Singh
P. S. Bharathi

Written by:
Prasoon Joshi

Based on
The Race of My Life by Milkha Singh and Sonia Sanwalka

• Farhan Akhtar as Subedar Milkha Singh a.k.a. The Flying Sikh
• Japtej Singh as young Milkha
• Divya Dutta as Isri Kaur, Milkha’s elder sister
• Meesha Shafi as Perizaad
• Pavan Malhotra as Hawaldar (Constable) Gurudev Singh, Milkha’s coach during his days in the Indian Army
• Yograj Singh as Ranveer Singh, Milkha’s coach
• Art Malik as Sampooran Singh, Milkha’s father
• Prakash Raj as Veerapandian
• K.K.Raina as Mr. Wadhwa
• Rebecca Breeds as Stella
• Dalip Tahil as Jawaharlal Nehru
• Dev Gill as Abdul Khaliq
• Nawab Shah as Abdul Khaliq’s coach
• Jass Bhatia as Mahinder
• Sonam Kapoor as Biro, Milkha’s fleeting love interest 

The movie begins with the Flying Sikh’s heart-breaking loss at the Rome Olympics in the 400 metres. Milkha Singh is far ahead of the field but turns his head to see where his rivals are and loses vital seconds. The result is a fourth place finish; yet, he too breaks the Olympic record along with the medallists.

Milkha is haunted by ghosts of his childhood past from Govindpura, in the then Punjab Province, British India—now Muzaffargarh District, Pakistan.

Milkha’s parents, a brother and two sisters were slaughtered before his eyes in the violence that ensued following the partition of British India. 

The film takes off with Milkha’s return to India and his refusal to lead a contingent of Indian athletes to Pakistan to race against Abdul Khaliq—-the fastest man in Asia.

Milkha’s back story is narrated by Pavan Malhotra as Hawaldar Gurudev Singh, Milkha’s initial coach,  and how he made the journey from a refugee camp to becoming the foremost Indian sportsperson of his generation and arguably of all time.

The movie is gripping while depicting life in a refugee camp, Milkha’s initiation into a life of petty crime but meanders in the scenes portraying his first love Biro and his moments with her.

To prove himself worthy of Biro, Milkha quits his criminal ways and joins the army.

The young Sardar starts running to gain an extra glass of milk, two eggs and to be excused from regular drill.

Milkha is soon on his way to becoming one of India’s top athletes and makes the cut for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

There he meets and falls for Stella, played by Rebecca Breeds, the grand-daughter of his Australian technical coach. Breeds is charming, delightful and lights up the screen with her cameo.

The Games, however, are a disaster for Milkha on the field. He loses his race and vows to make good by breaking the existing world record of 45.90 seconds.

He trains hard over the next four years with unyielding determination and even rejects a romantic overture from Indian Olympic swimmer Perizaad.

Milkha takes the world by storm in the run-up to the Rome Olympics and is one the pre-Games favourites for the 400 metres.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Milkha makes the journey across the border for the Friendly Games against Pakistan after being persuaded by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The highlight of the movie is his visit back to his village Govindpura where he exorcises demons of the past and is reunited with his boyhood friend Sampreet.

The Friendly Games race against Abdul Khaliq is a formality with Singh much too strong and powerful for his opponents.

The film ends with an adult Milkha Singh completing a victory lap visualizing his boyish self running alongside him.

Overall,  an enjoyable movie especially for sports fans and a ‘Don’t miss’ if you’re a follower of Indian athletics.