TNN | Jun 12, 2024, 12.40 AM IST
Confident of double-digit medal finish in Paris: IOA president PT Usha
NEW DELHI: Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president P T Usha has been working overtime to ensure that the country’s athletes get the best support in their quest to win medals at the Paris Olympics. Usha, a legendary athlete herself who became the first woman president of the IOA in the sports body’s 95-year-long history, sat down for a chat with TOI on Monday afternoon at the IOA Bhawan, speaking on a variety of topics ranging from India’s Olympics preparations, medal expectations, overall contingent size, dealing with athletes’ last-minute requests for personal coaches and support staff and progress made on India’s ambitious bid to host the Summer Games in 2036.
Excerpts from the conversation…

With the Paris Olympics round the corner, how has the IOA been supporting athletes to maximise India’s medal chances?

The preparation of our athletes is on the right track. Some of the medal contenders have requested additional support staff in terms of personal coaches, mental conditioning experts and physios and, we at the IOA, are accommodating their demands looking at the priority. For the first time, we will have a specialised team of sports science experts, with Dr Dinshaw Pardiwala as the Indian contingent’s chief medical officer (CMO). He will be assisted by deputy CMO Dr Tvisha Parikh. There’s a full-fledged team of 10 such experts which includes physiotherapists, nutritionists, wellness specialists and a sleep advisor and therapist. Also, for the first time, we have set up a round-the-clock recovery centre inside the Olympics Village which will have physiotherapy benches, in addition to six offered by the Games organisers, and sleeping cots. IOA has been given 600 square feet of land inside the Village to set up a recovery centre only for our athletes. Separate sleeping cots would also be there at the shooting venue which will allow our shooters to recover during competition breaks. The CMO, deputy CMO and two physios will stay inside the Village and the rest of the medical team will stay in a hotel outside. All of them will be available 24 hours at the centre to address injury issues faced by our athletes.

What will be the likely contingent size for Paris?

The athletes’ contingent size will be somewhere between 115-120. Till now, a total of 94 Indian athletes have qualified for Paris. The overall contingent size could be somewhere around 210. IOA will be sending 13 people, which will include CDM, deputy CDMs, doctors, physios and other staff. In addition to it, the sports federations (NSFs) have sent names of 51 support personnel and then there are another 30 such personnel who the NSFs and athletes have individually requested for. These 30-odd people will be staying outside.
There’s a trend that as the Olympics or any other multisport event approaches, some athletes start demanding their personal coaches and support staff be allowed to accompany them to the Games. How would the IOA deal with such a situation?

Look, we can’t accommodate everyone. We will have to give priority to medal contenders and those who stand a good chance to land a podium finish. Coaches and physios have to be inside the Village, but someone like a mental conditioning coach can be given day passes to visit their athletes. All such support staff personnel can stay outside. If everybody starts asking for 4-5 personal support staff, it’s impossible.

What is IOA’s medal projection for Paris?

I don’t want to put pressure on athletes by spelling out the number of medals we are expected to win. Of course, the expectation is to surpass our Tokyo tally of seven. It will be more than that. I am confident that India will have a double-digit medal tally.

What’s the progress on India’s bid for the 2036 Olympics?

In any bid, there are three phases. One is the ‘Expression of Interest’, then there is ‘Continuous Dialogues’ in which the interested host nation will engage in discussions with the IOC. The third phase is called the ‘Targeted Dialogue’ which will happen at a later stage. Right now, the IOA is in the phase of Continuous Dialogues. During the Paris Olympics, India will have two sets of teams of officials which will be interacting with the organisers and IOC. The representatives of all those nations who have shown interest will be there. There will be two sets of meetings which they call ‘Executive Programme’ and ‘Observers Programme’. In the former, there will be a combined team of the govt and IOA which will interact with the IOC officials and look to understand what goes into hosting an Olympics. In the Observers meet, the team will be informed about the sports facilities that’s been created, the thought behind creating those facilities and their sustainability and the feasibility of hosting the Games. Once we are back from the Olympics in August, the IOA will initiate the third phase of Targeted Dialogues. This entire process will take about two years.

IOA has been witnessing a lot of infighting between you and executive committee (EC) members since the appointment of Raghuram Iyer as the NOC’s CEO. Your comments…

We talk about hosting the Olympics. But to host it, we first need to have good governance in the IOA. The CEO’s appointment has still not been ratified by the EC, whereas it’s been accepted by both the Indian govt and IOC. EC members are only worried about power…they don’t want to perform their duties. They want me to work alone as an IOA president and not to be assisted by my office staff or CEO who has been appointed after following due process. My executive assistant, Captain (retd) Ajay Narang and CEO haven’t drawn salaries for months because of the unnecessary problems created by the EC members.

The Times of India