"We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off." – Tyler Durden, Fight Club.
The odds of a Pullela Gopichand interview commencing with a Fight Club quote are negligible, if not nil. Yet, there’s an undeniable thematic parallel between the film’s famous lines and the esteemed badminton coach’s recent remarks.
I advise parents not to put their children in sports. We are not in a position to offer sports as a career. Unless the children are from rich backgrounds or have a family business, it is not advisable for children to take up sport.Pullela Gopichand, to The Times of India
A statement that will spark debates, ensuing scrutiny of the Indian sporting ecosystem. What he meant to say was that – despite the overwhelming promulgation of triumphant tales of the nation’s successful athletes, and the subsequent silence regarding tribulations – only 1% of our budding athletes will make it to the grand pedestal, with the rest 99% finding themselves hopelessly stranded, without a ‘safety net.’
Something has got to give. But what, exactly? In a free-flowing chat with The Quint, Gopichand explains his stance.
India’s sporting ecosystem has been abuzz with your recent comments. Can you explain how our system is flawed, which led you to raise your concerns?
I spoke about this issue because day in and day out, I see people who have given 10-15 years of their lives to sports. Say, somebody is started at the age of 5-6 and then when they end up at the age of 19-20, they realize that they don't have the potential to be a world-class athlete at the highest level. I look at so many people like these across sports and I think about the time and effort they have invested. Every single day they are not spending just 5 or 6 hours, but 24 hours, because they are not doing anything outside of sport. They practice, they rest, they recover. Their careers are totally dedicated to sports. But what if they don’t become world-class athletes? Because once you are a world-class athlete, or you win some of those big medals, then in some sense, there is security in your life. If you don't make it big, really big, and if I want to say Olympics, then maybe you hardly have 5 or 10 medals in your career. And that’s a very small number. My point is, if you don’t make it to a big level, and you also have finished your academic career because it ran parallel with your sporting career, and then at 22-23 you realise you are not world-class, what’s your fallback option? Who will take care of you? This is the basic issue I'm trying to raise. You have neglected your studies, and you are not good enough to be a world-class athlete. Where do you go?
What would be your suggestion to fix India’s flawed sporting ecosystem?
What I would suggest is, if you are starting sports at 6-7, continue for seven or eight years and then assess whether you are good enough. If you feel you are not, then go back to school. It's not so difficult at all, because you are still in class 7 or 8 at that point. Not a problem. But say you have won state championships and national medals so you continue in sports and want to transition to academics at 18, it is difficult. Because by then, you have neglected your studies also. So my point is, I want colleges to have foundation courses which will help athletes transition back to academics. Where they would say ‘Okay, for one year, we will hold your hands and help you get back on track.’ One year of laying the foundation. Colleges should give you a scholarship and train you. If you are a high-level athlete who has done really well, transition them into administrative training for IAS, or say, for MBA. So that when they get a job and they are sitting in an office, it is commensurate to the level of respect that they deserve.
You have always been a staunch advocate of kids with sporting aspirations not neglecting their academic persuasions. Yet, with the level of competition rising meteorically across every sport, it seems the balancing act is becoming ever so challenging. How will a kid tackle such a dilemma?
I am a strong believer in sports being supremely important for everybody. Playing a professional sport teaches you a lot, whether it is about working hard, great teamwork lessons, or learnings regarding failure and bouncing back. So in my view, every kid should be looked at as a potential professional athlete who is going to win medals for the country and whose training should be a lot more on the ground than in the classroom. But we all know that it is not possible to have a foundation programme for every kid, because it is a very expensive proposition. So my proposition is, try to play multiple sports when you are in class 4 or 5, and then by class 8 or 9, filter it out and stick with something you are really good at. Then, if you have the ability to be a world-class athlete, continue playing the sport. But if you do not have the ability, just transition back to education. You can still play the sport as a hobby, you can play for health and fitness and pleasure, but not necessarily to be a world-class athlete. Because training to be a world-class athlete means you are neglecting education, which doesn’t put you in a good standing. If you become big, it’s fine. But if you don’t, it’s a big problem. The majority of our budding athletes should transition back to education and play sports for hobby and passion and health.
Having a Plan B is essential, and we, as elders, know that. But to tell a kid that he does not have the talent to be a world-class athlete and should consider an alternate career option – that too, after he has given his formative years to sports – can end up deflating his self-esteem. Can such a problem be tackled?
I think the kids who are playing sports should believe that they are going to win no matter what. For them, sports should be the Plan A. They should only think that they are going to be the next big thing in sports. And they have to believe that they will win. When I speak about Plan B, I don’t mean it for the kids, but for the society. For us, parents. A kid doesn’t need to know about that, because unless he believes he will be in that 1% who become world-class athletes, he will not succeed. But when they get to the age of 14-16, they should see if they are falling in that 1%. If not, they need to go back to education. It is a very scientific decision, it is not an emotional decision at all. Take inputs from the coaches, use scientific knowledge to determine how far you can go. And when the transition happens, we tell the kid that it’s okay, you couldn’t make it big, but it is not a problem. It does not make you a loser in life. We need to teach our kids that it's okay to lose in sports. It's not a crime to lose. The most hardworking people I know didn’t make it very big. Unfortunately, that's the reality. So for us to believe that somebody who has won something big is the most hardworking is wrong. It's not the champions who worked the hardest. We should tell the kid that it's fine if he works ten times harder than the champion and still doesn’t succeed. Maybe his genetics let him down, maybe his knuckles were not as strong. It does not make him a loser. We need to celebrate the exit. We need to find better exit points to give the kid confidence when he exists out. Kids should not walk out of a sport like a loser. He has to walk out like a winner, so that when he goes to another field, he goes with a champion mindset.
You have the lineage of literacy, like most of our badminton players. Though transitioning from sports to academics is a difficult ordeal for all, perhaps it would be fair to say that those in a sport like badminton have the privilege of always having academics as a fall-back option. But what about those who don’t? What about our budding wrestlers in the akhadas of Haryana, who have left schools and can’t really turn to education as an alternative?
You have rightfully pointed it out. I come from a family where my parents told me I could continue playing if I found a job, otherwise I can’t. Just this morning I spoke with Chirag (Shetty), and he said ‘Bhaiya, I was not very happy (playing badminton) till I got my job.’ Prannoy (HS) will tell you the same. Because once they got the job, they felt that safety net. I felt it, Guru (Sai Dutt) felt it, all of us coming from the lower-middle class did. When someone like Treesa Jolly asks me ‘Bhaiya, can you please find me a job?’ it is a very painful scenario. This problem compounds even more if you are a wrestler, or a boxer. In hockey, we have a Viren Rasquinha from Mumbai who was smart enough to figure it out. But where are the other hockey players who went to ISB? Our wrestlers have left everything for the akhadas. Their problem is even bigger than badminton players, as you said. I propose a two-year scholarship programme for them. It doesn’t necessarily be education-based, it can be a skilling programme. But the main issue is that we need to create jobs for them. You don't want an Olympic medallist to be left without any earning opportunity. If there isn’t any job available, just put him back as a coach into a system, open an academy for him. Or give him a loan of Rs 1 crore and say that we'll try to open a business for him, whatever it is.
You have proposed an exit plan for those who are in their mid-teens, so that they can return to academics if they find they are not meant for sports. But what about those who are now at the dusk of their careers? What will they do?
When I speak about having an exit plan, I want to have an exit plan at all levels. Say you are 30 and you have only played sports for the last 20 years of your life. You have zero life skills. You don’t know how to plan things for the next 60 years of your life, considering you’ll be living 90. You don't have anything to back you up for the next eight years, and 60 years of your life are still left! Then, you have to reinvent yourself. The problem which we have, and we will continue to have, is that a champion also has an ego. We don’t want to start at zero. That is a nightmare, because we cannot amalgamate easily into society. For the last 20 years, you have been treated like a superstar. You got up in the morning and everything was sorted, your food, your training, your recovery. And now you know only one thing – my sport, my sport, my sport. Suddenly you go to an office and you have to report to somebody. You have to take orders from them. The other point is that the very nature of sport is you are not accepting authority. You became a great athlete because you were challenging your seniors. You were challenging the status quo. Your competitive spirit is so much that you always thought you were better than the next person. And now, you cannot take orders at your new job. That's the fundamental deficit here. When I go to an office, the boss doesn't know how to treat me. I don't know how to treat my boss. We've just left them on the battlefield to try and figure it out. The general mindset among non-sports people is this fellow has come from a sports quota background, so he has landed directly where I have been working so hard for 6 years. This guy has come in a parachute and I was made to work for it. So I will actually act against him. It's a very subtle thing. There are lots of subtle things to the entire equation which we need to address. Get our athletes a respectable livelihood post their retirement, because we need them to return back to society and contribute in a new form. after they finish their sporting career.
There’s another problem. Athletes are supremely motivated when they are playing. The day they finish their career, many of them will lose their purpose. Because till then, they were only thinking about trophies. One fine morning if you ask them to check some papers instead of winning trophies, will they be motivated? We need mentors to handhold them, to make their lives a lot more easier.
The powers that be, those who are in a position to trigger changes, might be reading this interview. What would your suggestion be to them?
The only constant we have is that 99% of those who try will fail. Everybody wants to think only of the 1% who will succeed. All I am saying is just figure out a plan for the 99%. I don't have an exact plan, I have given you the few ideas that I have. But nobody is thinking about those who will fail. We only think about the next Olympics preparation, the next Commonwealth cycle. I keep saying that we have an issue here. When I was playing, 30 people were playing, and there were 20 jobs. Not a problem, right? Today, there are 30,000 people playing, but jobs have remained at 20, or even gotten lower. So, how are we addressing this job crisis? When I was a junior national champion, I got a job at Tata Steel. When I was not even a national champion, I got a job in Indian Oil. Now, we have Commonwealth Games medallists, Olympics medallists, Asian Games medalists who don't have a job. When they finally do, they get jobs in clerical positions. Today, athletes are inspiring so many people because they have done so well. The prime minister is meeting with the athletes, there’s the Khelo India scholarships, there are so many corporates who are supporting sports, like Reliance, JSW. Everybody is making kids super-inspired, everybody is pushing them into sports. But my question is, when eventually 99% of them will fail and quit, what is our plan? Who is thinking about them? I think every stage of the exit programme should be a well-thought-out and handheld program. It is very difficult, because neither do we have the knowledge, nor enough people to do this. So my suggestion is to at least the national champions at the highest level first. Once you have sorted them out, sort a bigger batch. Say, take care of 40 people first, then take care of 400 people, then as bandwidth increases, take it to 4000, then 40000. Start from the top, but at least have people who are actively thinking about this. The only guarantee we have is 99% will fail. Who will succeed we don’t know, but we know 99% won’t. So when we can see there is a problem, let's address that. And that 99% will fall out at different stages in their career. 70% might fall out at age 13. The next 10% will fall out at maybe age 16. The next 10% may fall out at age 19. Few will fall out at 25. And eventually, the last batch will fall off at 35. But irrespective of when they are exiting, we should have an ecosystem where they are supported in their transition. We need to have mentors, we need to have academics, we need to have psychology professionals. I hope we can all do this together.