In the United States of America, we are a nation tied deeply to this sense of national pride and patriotic independence that won us the rights to our own land almost 250 years ago. From the days where musket-balls and bayonets helped defend these borders to these days where drones and surgical missiles help defend democracy and human rights across the globe, those who salute the stars and stripes and those who were that flag on their arm and place camouflage across their chest are hailed in this nation as true heroes. While scoring a goal for your country cannot be compared to taking a bullet for your country, the American pride continues into more trivial forms of patriotic representation such as the Olympics or most other international competitions.
In situations like these, the United States Olympic Committee recruits hundreds of athletes and spends millions of dollars to house, pay and otherwise support athletes in tens of different disciplines ranging from skiing, to lugeing to sprinting and soccer playing in the Summer Games. Frankly, this committee does not gain much money from these games in fact in several cases in the past they have actually suffered serious losses financially and yet they have never wavered in their commitment to their athletes, their sport and the pride they gain by driving a man or women of American blood to Olympic success.
For 118 years it has been this way. For 118 years the Stars and Stripes have been a feared precursor to Olympic defeat of anyone who stands in their path and so for 118 years, medals have been won, records have been broken and millions upon millions of dollars have been poured forth in order to pay for thousand dollar bobsleds, hundred dollar skies and 50 foot row boats that weigh close to nothing. In these 118 years, that devoted behind the scene work has brought 2670 different medals in the summer and winter games as well as a combined 1071 gold medal wins in the 48 games this country has sent atheleats to.
Though the US could probably get away with spending less money on their athletes, they support then, praise them and celebrate their accomplishments with the utmost enthusiasm.
Unfortunately even in nations with the resources to duplicate that, there is no support whatsoever. The relationship of India to its 2014 Olympic athletes and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that governs them is a perfect example of that negligence.
After it was founded in 1927, the Indian Olympic Association struggled to produce real contenders in any of the competitions it entered and has actually never won multiple gold medals at one Olympics. Overall, they have won just 9 gold medals and 26 all time. But as bad as things were, what has happened in this lead-up to Sochi 2014 has been dubbed by many within the very small Indian sports community as the biggest disgrace in the history of Indian sports.
Fact is, the anatomy of that disgrace has unfolded over just a few years and yet, for those involved with it has been hopelessly embarrassing. Beginning in December of 2012, a sudden intervention of the IOC into the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) was initiated as a result of the IOA's hiring of officials who were facing various charges of corruption. Seeing as they are most surely situated as a highly powerful committee in the sports world, the IOC came in and basically said that they do not like corrupt people working in any group under their jurisdiction. As these charges unfolded and began to seem more and more real, an additional crime on the part of the IOA was brought to the attention of the IOC. That being that India had failed to comply with the IOC's hiring standards of background checks, democratic voting and consultation with the IOC before any contracts were signed.
As a result of all of these infractions, the IOC announced on December 4th 2012 that the Indian Olympic Association had been suspended. As a result of that, the IOA would not receive any support or inclusion in the Olympics until it complied with the written code and the ban was lifted. Unfortunately, as we learned earlier in these games in an article published by Samanth Subramanian for the New Yorker this ban has punished more people than just those directly involved in the scandal.
So long as the IOA did not fairly elect new officials, those who it sent to Sochi 2014 would not be allowed to do so under the flag of their home country. Instead they would compete under a meaningless white flag emblazoned with the 5 iconic "Olympic Rings".
I say meaningless because to each of the 3 "independent athletes" that India sent to these games, it was.
Shiva Keshavan, a man hailed as the greatest India winter athlete in history verbalized that feeling.
“This has been so demoralizing,” Keshavan, said over Skype. “It must be one of the greatest humiliations in the history of Indian sports.”
Keshavan has 2 other unrepresented Indian teammates competing with him, one being alpine skier: Himanshu Thakur and the other being cross counters skier: Nadeem Iqbal. Though neither Thakur or Iqbal have spoken publicly about their thoughts on the suspension and the ensuing nomination as an independent delegation, it has been proven that in the rather tumultuous history of people competing as independent athletes, there has been very little pride and quite a bit of discontent
But there is something else that makes this suspension sting just a little bit more for these Indians.
"Unless your discipline of choice is cricket," Wrote the New Yorker's Samanth Subramanian in that same article mentioned before, "India is no country for athletes. Infrastructure is scant, government support is provided grudgingly, and sports associations are rife with politicking."
Of course, India is a nation that lies on relatively the same latitude as Florida and deals with the same heat plus some to the American resort state. However unlike Florida and the nation it is a part of, it does not relish any kind of obsession with any sport whatsoever.
“I’ve never seen our officials prioritize Indian sports or Indian athletes at all,” Shiva said.
Fact is for Shiva, he is a man unknown to anybody within much of India. Though he has won multiple luge distinctions and is a record holder among Asian lugers, Shiva is feeling the effects of there being no luge tracks whatsoever in his home country and has gone to great lengths to train anyway. Having made 5 trips to the Olympics, Shiva has on several occasions used a modified sled to race down a mountain highway. Additionally, once he had finished his training, Shiva was told that even though he had qualified for the games, the IOA would not provide him with the money to go and go or even buy a luge sled. Instead he would have to raise that on his own.
Shiva opened a fundraising site through a generic NGO and actually managed to raise close to 16,000 US dollars to compensate the Indian government for the fare.
For him, competing independently was just another thing on the list of reasons for unhappiness.
All and all, it is not just Americans who feel pride in representing their country on such a grand stage as the Olympics and as strange as it seems, no matter how much pain and neglect the nation of India has dealt its athletes, their harshest ailment is that caused by the lack of a meaningful flag tied to their name as it associates to these games.
In blood and breath, these men are Indian but in the score sheet and in the eyes of an onlooker uneducated in the politics of why independent competitors are labeled as such they are without a flag.
The Independent Delegation
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| Luge: Shiva Keshavan |
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| Cross Country Ski: Nadem Iqbal |
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| Alpine Skiing: Himanshu Thakur |
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