Our Olympic mirror

Not many sitting in the 78,000-capacity Maracana in Rio de Janeiro would have noticed that Pakistan’s contingent at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Gameson Friday night was extraordinarily small. After all, it is difficult for a Brazilian spectator to notice anything about a country which has achieved little Olympic success in its history other than hockey. And when the country’s hockey team fails to qualify for the Games then that’s what you get – a group of seven athletes given wild card entries by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) so that one of the world’s most populous countries doesn’t completely miss out on Olympic action. Our dismal presence at the spectacular opening ceremony was yet another stark reminder of the fact that if we had any standing at the international sporting level it has long vanished. There was a time when Pakistan would be in contention for an Olympic medal in wrestling and boxing. Having won three Olympic gold medals, hockey was one discipline that we took for granted. But our hockey’s decline means that Pakistan hasn’t won any Olympic medal in two decades. For Rio, the national hockey team even failed to qualify for the first time in our history. But instead of doing much-needed soul-searching on the eve of the opening ceremony, Pakistan sports chiefs were doing what they do best – quarrelling. This time the fight was over the matter of who will carry the national flag at the ceremony. The Pakistan Olympic Association’s choice was shooter Ghulam Mustafa Bashir while the Pakistan Sports Board wanted judoka Shah Hussain Shah as the flag-bearer. In the end, POA which has the support of the IOC, had its way and Bashir carried the flag. For the record, traditionally Pakistan picks its hockey team’s captain as the flag-bearer but that wasn’t possible in Rio.

The tussle over who will carry the national flag was the latest episode of the long-standing battle between POA and PSB. Their fight, which is primarily for the control of sports in Pakistan, has already done a great deal of harm. Instead of promoting sports, training our athletes and setting up infrastructure, the government-funded PSB tries, every now and then, to wrest control of the POA. On its part, the POA is no victim either as its top officials use the association for their own vested interests more than anything else. For anybody familiar with what’s happening in the seamy world of Pakistan sports, the country’s minimal presence in Rio didn’t come as a big surprise. It won’t be much of a surprise either if Pakistan goes to Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics in similar circumstances. After all, we seem least bothered.