Pakistan's performance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has once again brought about attention to the state of sports in Pakistan. Of course, it would have been far more useful had this attention come some years earlier, when there was time to prepare for the games, and even after 2018 when a prominent sportsman took over as prime minister of the country. The government has now said that the chief of the Pakistan Olympic Association Gen (r) Arif Hassan must step out of office – given that during the 17 years over which he has held office, beginning in 2004, Pakistan has won no medals. This, indeed, is absolutely accurate. Pakistan's last Olympic medal came in 1992 at Barcelona, when it picked up the bronze medal in field hockey, a sport it once dominated but for which it has not qualified during the last two Olympics.
While the attacks have been directed at Gen Arif, and certainly there are questions as to whether one person should hold an important post in sports for so long a period, the fact is that the Pakistan Olympic Association chiefly represents the International Olympic Committee in the country and has relatively little to do with financing sport or supervising the development of athletes. This is primarily the role of the Pakistan Sports Board, a body set up on corporate lines which is intended to finance sports and develop sports infrastructure in the country. The clash between the two organisations has certainly not helped sport and has in fact held them back, with the POA alleging that even the budget available to the PSB was not fully utilised and money was returned to the treasury.
The fact is that the entire structure of sports in the country needs to be examined. Almost each of our sporting federations runs in incompetent ways, with very little interest regarding sportspersons and more interest in promoting office-bearers. We have seen the kind of rift that has torn the Football Federation apart again and again. Each of these federations needs to be put back on the right track and, most importantly of all, we need a well-built sporting structure which can ensure that sportspersons benefit from training and far better standards of coaching. A country of 220 million people should be standing on the podium and not off it, whether at the regional or at the international level.
