A couple of days ago, India finally won its first medal, a bronze at the Rio Olympic Games and yesterday Sindhu has won the silver in the finals of the women’s singles badminton at the games. India is celebrating.

Last week Singapore found their new God. Their very first Olympic Gold medal has been won by Joseph Schooling in the 100m butterfly event beating Michael Phelps in the process. Second generation Singaporean Indians must be ecstatic because while working there in the late 90’s I used to be asked a question by them (on more than one occasion), “How come you have a population of over a billion and still cannot win an Olympic Gold medal”.  That brings us to the questions, “Is a country’s greatness determined by the number of Gold medals or medals it can win?”. Should the Olympics be the standard in judging a nation’s greatness? Should winning a medal at the Olympics be taken so seriously? Why this obsession? This post will be my attempt to clarify this.

First, let’s look at some of the most common things that are said about the games.

1. The Olympics is a friendly coming together of the nations of the world, a fraternity of sports persons (athletes, coaches, referees et. all).

Really?

While good things do happen, (yes, there are and I am not going to go through that list) but they are offset by the bad things. Here is a list of some of the sore events.

1936 – Hitler tying to prove that his “Aryan” race was the most dominant race of the planet and rubbished by Jesse Owens single handed, that it was all BS. No one made the games more racist than Hitler.

1972 – Probably the most deplorable team behavior was when the US Basketball team refused to accept the silver medals after losing to the USSR in the finals which itself was marred by all kinds of controversies and allegations. Till date, the silver medals remain unclaimed and lie in the custody of the IOC.

2008 – Cuban Angel Matos wasn’t angel when he kicked the referee who disqualified him. With a Taekwondo leg kick which could have actually caused serious harm had it made full contact, Angel Matos won the wrath of the Taekwondo community and was banned for life from international competition. He also pushed another referee and spat on the floor repeatedly.  In the same Olympics two other incidents that marred the games was the throwing of the bronze medal on the floor by Ara Abrahamian and the age of the Chinese women gymnastic team. The gymnasts looked much lower than the permissible age. Why this desperation for the medals!

And with politics creeping into the games –

1980 – US led boycott of the Olympics in Moscow.

1984 – 17 countries, 14 of them lead by the USSR boycott the games.

1984 was also the year, we watched live, The Zola Budd-Mary Decker 3000m duel. I am not arguing as to who was right or wrong in that tripping and falling but it was an ugly event no doubt. Thanks to the media, people were looking forward to this duel and it did become one.

And I am not going into the killings of the athletes at Munich.

At Rio, in the Judo match Egyptian Islam El Shehaby refused the typical handshake with his opponent Or Sasson from Israel to whom he lost, violating basic Judo etiquette.

So with all this bitter rivalry and desperate longing to win medals at-all-costs, the true spirit of healthy competition and fun of participation are actually being destroyed from the games.

2.  The games are absolutely fair when it comes to judging and refereeing?

We all wish it must be that way, sadly it isn’t.  I am going to mention just one incident. Who can forget the infamous verdict at the 1988 Olympics when Korean boxer Park Si Hun who was pummeled with 86 punches by Roy Jones compared to Park’s 32, went on to win the Gold in probably the worst decision ever made in Olympic history. Both Roy and Park were stunned with the verdict. The scene of Roy leaving in tears covering his feelings with a towel to his face is implanted in the memory of almost everyone who saw that bout.

3.  The athletes taking part in the competition are the epitome of Good Health.

Again, Really?

At Rio, Silvia Danekva, the Bulgarian 3000m steeplechase runner and Chinese swimmer Chen Xinyi both fail doping tests. You wonder if athletes actually carry drugs into the Olympics village and if they are using ample doses of them.

Prior to that the entire Russian team almost missed being banned for Rio by the IOC after WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) reported a “state-dictated” system to implement an extensive doping program to cover up positive samples. Can you imagine that! Covering the performance enhancing drugs in a sportsman’s body so that they may go undetected! The IOC then decided against the total ban and allowed 278 of the 389 athletes to participate. 111 were removed, including the world champion pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva. Indians have succumbed to the lure of drug-enhanced performances too. Indian wrestler Narsingh Yadav made it to Rio by a whisker and as of today has been banned for 4 years from competition.

In the past we know what happened to Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and outside the Olympics, Lance Amstrong. In the end it is just unfair pitting a healthy athlete against a drugged one. What are the chances for a healthy athlete to win against the drugged / doped athletes and unfair refereeing and judging.

Besides doping, athletes in their struggle to become Olympic champions push themselves to the limit endangering their lives. Here is one very good Ted Ex talk I would implore you to watch. Anyone doing any kind of exercise must  watch this video.

Let’s take a small digression now.

In his million selling classic “The Autobiography of a Yogi” Paramahansa Yogananda mentions of various saints and yogis of India with superhuman powers. One of them, whom Yogananda calls the Tiger Swami, fought tigers with empty hands in a cage and subdued them. No human can even imagine performing a feat as this. The swami actually become one after his last fight with a Royal Bengal tiger which many thought would result in his death but he triumphed, despite being severely wounded. After the bout he gave up fighting the canines and turned to sainthood. Can any of the feats in modern Olympics be compared to this one. If that wasn’t enough Yogananda mentions of another saint and yogini, Giri Bala who can be seen with the master in the image below.

The saint had been going on without a single morsel of food for 56 years (1880-1936) when Yogananda met her. Let me repeat and reword that phrase again, “NO FOOD INTAKE FOR 56 YEARS“. Leave alone the history of the Olympics, in the history of the world I know no one who has done anything remotely similar and yet yogis like Giri Bala and Tiger Swami aren’t running for medals. In their profound modesty, they don’t even consider their super feats, ultimate achievements in life. I have brought your attention to just two of the saints from the book though Yogananda talks about more “supermen” in his best selling classic. Many more saints and yogis with superhuman strengths and powers live in India today, some even have powers to control the forces of nature. I am not asking our sport ministry to round up yogis for the next Olympics because it will only be an exercise in futility.  These yogis in spite of their superhuman strengths hardly care for such things as medals, when the whole world seems to be obsessed with them. To them the joys of the spirit are greater than those of the body and body obsession only nurtures other evils such as ego, pride, race superiority and domination, to name a few, that only creates further division among us in an already very divided world.

I’ll go a step further with spirituality, this time using the Theory of Reincarnation (which is applicable to all life irrespective of religion, but I’ll save those details for another post)

After a victory it is common to see athletes drape the flag of their country and some even do a victory run.  The Theory of Reincarnation makes this laughable because the theory says there’s no guarantee you will be born in the same country in your next life, the one that you are so jingoistic about now. Spirituality even says that if one’s consciousness is filled with thoughts of downing a rival country chances are that you will be reborn in that rival country.

Apart from the Theory of reincarnation taking its course, several of these champion athletes have defected or moved to another country, away from their country of domicile.  Many of the athletes from communist countries are forgotten after the games. As we speak Nadia Comaneci is also an American Citizen and currently lives in the U.S. So what is so patriotic about the “perfect 10” or winning the medal for Romania when you are now a citizen of a different country and also living there.

Oksana Baiul former Ukranian figure skater also currently resides in the U.S and so does Zola Budd, famous for the 1984 LA Olympics episode. Anthony Neste of Surinam, the guy who beat favorite Matt Biondi in the 100m Butterfly at the 1988 Olympics is in the U.S too.

This feeling of oneness of the human race was also emphasized way back in the Sangam age (3 BC to 4 AD) in Tamilnadu (the state where I have lived most of my life in India) by Tamil philosopher Pungunranar in his work “Purananuru” where he coined the quote “Yadum Oore, yavarum kelir” meaning “All places in the world are our motherland and all humanity our kin”. How beautiful! The United Nations took note of this quote when India’s former President APJ Abdul Kalam, mentioned it at the UN.

All said and done, do I watch the Olympics closely? I would love to, provided I have the time like I used to have for the previous Olympics Games. It’s fantastic to watch great performances and watch a healthy competition. Athletes enjoying the fun of sport is what I would like to see and not the bitter rivalry or the desperation to win medals. Wasn’t that the way the games were played originally. An Olive branch wreath on your head was what you received for winning.

 May 26, 2020 – Not surprising at all in a country as India. Another Yogi who hasn’t had food for 70 years just passed away recently, Prahlad Jani aka Chunriwala Mataji. May his soul rest in peace in God.