I shall spare you the details of what is going wrong with the Indian sports system. The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) is just as dysfunctional as most Indian sports federations – and so is the bid for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2036 and beyond, whether it involves Amdavad in the state of Gujarat or any other city or region on the subcontinent. The latest example, hard to believe …
A few days ago in New Delhi, the IOA unveiled yet another vision for the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games:
"Captured in two powerful words, 'Rising Together', the vision is one of converging ambitions to unlock enormous potentials: with the Games in India in 2036, a nation can accelerate its transformation through sport while the Olympic Movement opens its next great universal chapter."
A few things spring to mind.
The long-standing German IOC member and former sports director of the IOC Walther Tröger used to say:
"Anyone who has visions should go and see a doctor."
I would like to adapt Tröger’s saying as follows:
Anyone who has visions like those of the Indians and their expensive agencies from the Burson-WPP conglomerate should seriously ask themselves what they are doing for a living.
Anyone who harbours visions as brazen as India’s should at least make sure they are in line with Olympic conventions and certain legal frameworks.
In fact, the IOA and/or the Gujarat Sports Infrastructure Development Company Limited (GSID) should perhaps consider severing ties with Burson in India and Switzerland. One can surely assume that the (allegedly) new slogan was devised by highly paid agencies and advisers.
As the highly controversial IOA President Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha recently put it, according to an IOA propaganda release distributed by Burson:
