State of play

Purists will disagree, but sports are a continuation of politics. The Beijing Olympics have, from the outset, been about the People's Republic of China taking its rightful place in the world as a major power, a culmination of a journey that began with its being granted a seat at the United Nations in 1972, and progressed steadily with Deng Xiaoping's post-1978 reforms and the WTO inclusion in 2001.

With the Indian Olympic Association hoping to bid for the 2020 Olympics, India's debutante ball may be twelve years down the road. By then, its GDP would be about 90 percent of what China's is today, and the games would — like those in Tokyo, Munich, Seoul and Beijing — signal a power's arrival as a player on the global stage.

But for all the celebration and glitz that would surround a successful Delhi Olympiad, there should be fears of possible downsides: organisational failures in a country where infrastructure is occasionally held hostage to public dissent; politically motivated demonstrations when the world's attention is focused on every aspect of India's profile; and, perhaps most embarrassingly, the host country's sporting performance during the games.

Historically, India has shown its ability to host and perform respectably at large sporting events, although nothing yet of the level of the Olympics. India finished second in the medals tally as hosts of the inaugural Asian Games in 1951, but that was before China and several other major states entered the fray. In 1982, India finished fifth when Delhi was once again the venue for the Asian Games. The country has, of course, hosted two cricket World Cups, as well as other major cricket tournaments. By 2013, when the host of the 2020 games are decided, India will have also had the 2010 Commonwealth Games and another cricket World Cup under its belt.

... contd.

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