Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal's dream and changing attitudes help sports find its feet in India.
All India hopes that Virdhawal Khade will not become a software engineer.
On his broad swimmer’s shoulders sit the country’s desires to become something other than an Olympic also-ran.
Never has India won more than two medals in an Olympic Games.
In a country home to one third of the world’s poor, parents dream of children with steady jobs, not Olympic medals.
But India is changing, and with the country’s rising affluence, athletes such as Khade are finding that, for the first time, they have the support to chase their Olympic dreams.
“We have enormous potential, but we have not always tapped it properly,” says Randhir Singh, secretary-general of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). “Our emphasis has not been on sports; [it] has been on water and roads.
"But economically, India is doing a lot better and we have the surplus money now.”
With help from Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian billionaire desperate for his homeland to make its mark at the medals table, Khade has been given everything he needs — from training in Australia to treatment in South Africa.
Former Indian Olympians say this is unprecedented, and it has given them hope that the country might reverse its history of Olympic underachievement.
Since independence in 1947, India has won only 12 Olympic medals in 14 Summer Games.
The problem, some observers say, is culturally ingrained. With the exception of cricket, sports in India has always been dismissed as an unviable career.
“Our problem is Indian society just isn’t interested in sport,” says Prem Sharma, a boxing coach.
“Parents tell their children to study and become engineers and doctors and not to waste time on sport.”
Would-be Olympians have often felt abandoned and anonymous.
Funding was limited and training facilities were scattered across the country. Athletes trained more for national competitions than Olympic-calibre events.
The Athens Games tally four years ago was typical: a single silver in shotgun double-trap shooting.
In fact, the silver represented the best medal haul for India since the Moscow Games of 1980.
But the performance prompted steel magnate Mittal to action. In an effort to pick up where India’s Olympic development had always faltered — the leap from promising talent to Olympic contender — he established the Mittal Champions Trust.
The goal is to “put India on the medals grid” in the 2012 London Games by identifying India’s best athletes and giving them the money to travel the world to the best competitions and coaches.
Boxer Akhil Kumar says he owes the trust everything. After suffering a serious injury to his right hand, “my dreams were over”, says the 2006 Commonwealth Games gold medallist. In the past, perhaps they would have been.
But the trust flew him to a specialist in South Africa, paid for two surgeries and the rehabilitation that has followed. “The Mittal Champions Trust gave me new life,” he says.
Former Olympic swimmer Hakimuddin Habibulla says this is a revolution for Indian sport.
“I was always told I couldn’t make a career out of swimming, so I had to study. It was very difficult to combine both,” the 2000 Olympian says.
“I couldn’t afford to train abroad,” he adds, so he became a software engineer. Today, Khade does not need to make that choice.
When the date of his board exams recently clashed with the world championships, Khade went to the world championships.
There, he qualified for the Beijing Olympics.
“This was unimaginable to us even a couple of years ago,” says Habibulla, who has seen his national records eclipsed by Khade.
“It has opened the eyes of many people as to what things are achievable if you have the support.”
This includes the government of India, he says. “Funds such as the Mittal Champions Trust create a positive pressure on the whole system,” says Habibulla, who has left his job to become an agent for athletes, including Khade.
IOA secretary-general Singh agrees. “The economic growth of India is changing the thinking,” he says.
As evidence of the government’s increased emphasis on sports, he points to the IOA’s plans to establish 800,000 sports clubs in villages throughout India and to build a 150-acre national Olympic training centre.
Until then, the Sports Authority of India’s national training centre in Patiala, in the western state of Punjab, is an attempt to improve the conditions for elite Indian athletes.
Within a converted palace, judo dojos and fencing pistes sit upon marble floors in what were once the bedrooms of the maharaja’s 364 wives.
Habibulla, too, has seen positive signs, with the government more responsive to Khade’s needs.
“Things are heading in the right direction,” he says.
