South Koreans Make Fun Of Indian Olympic Officials
Indian archers lose at Paris Olympics as coach Baek Woong-ki was reportedly replaced by friend of Indian official
(Photo: Deepika Kumari, Indian archer. Courtesy International Olympic Committee.)
August 15, 2024
A video titled “The Conspiracy Against Vinesh Phogat” was released today by Dhruv Rathee on his YouTube channel. Rathee, who has more than 24 million followers on YouTube, narrates the struggles Phogat has faced since early childhood till she was disqualified prior to her gold medal wrestling match at the recent Paris Olympics.
In 2023, Phogat led a group of wrestlers who protested in Delhi demanding the ouster of Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. In a letter, the group accused Singh of sexually harassing several Indian female wrestlers. The letter, also alleged that, after Phogat missed out on a medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Singh “mentally harassed and tortured” her, driving the wrestler to the point of almost contemplating suicide.
Phogat was disqualified at the Paris Olympics because she was found to weigh about 100 grams more than her 50-kilogram weight class. This, as Rathee notes, was due to mismanagement – apparently even vendetta against her - by Indian officials.
Another major failure of Indian officials at the Paris Olympics was evident in the poor performance of Indian archers.
In April, at the Archery World Cup Competition Stage 1 in Shanghai, China, India won five gold, two silver and one bronze medals. “India's archers stamped their authority…with a stupendous” performance, proclaims a banner on the site of the Archery Association of India (AAI).
The Indians were coached by South Korean Baek Woong-ki. He was the coach of South Korean archers at the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2012 London Olympics, where the country won four gold and one silver medals.
In sharp contrast, India’s team of six archers won no medals at the Paris Olympics. Those on the team were: Ankita Bhakat, Dhiraj Bommadevara, Pravin Jadhav, Bhajan Kaur, Deepika Kumari, and Tarundeep Rai. The AAI site does not even list the results. Indian archers were “completely defeated,” notes a report in South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper.
“There are four important elements to good results” in archery, French coach Seon Tek told an interviewer for the country’s archery federation’s website. “Technique, physical, mental and competition management. I’m not going to work on one part but all four to get the best out of each archer and raise their level of performance.”
Days before the start of the Paris Olympics, the mental preparation and competition management of Indian archers suffered a big hit. On July 20, AAI officials replaced their coach Woong-ki for “dubious reasons, sparking controversy,” according to South Korea’s Maeil.
Though Woong-ki had traveled to Paris, the officials did not give him the ID card for entry to the Olympic Stadium and athletes' village. Instead, they asked him to return to India.
The ID denial was “humiliating and insulting,” Woong-ki told the Hindustan Times. The insult and the subsequent poor performance of Indian archers were big news in South Korea. Commentators on TV, news sites, social media and on YouTube ridiculed Indian officials. They also reported that the Indian who got the ID card, instead of Woong-Ki, had a tainted background.
Arvind Yadav, a physical therapist, reportedly replaced Woong-Ki on the Indian archery staff at the Paris Olympics. In November 2023, during the Youth World Championship in Ireland, Canadian officials complained that Yadav made an “inappropriate suggestion” to a Canadian teenager on social media, according to The Business Standard. Yadav is reportedly very close to Virendra Sachdeva, who heads AAI’s operations as its Secretary General.
(Photo: Vinesh Phogat, Indian wrestler. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)
"Why are you raking this up? Let's not talk about it. Let's not create another controversy now," Arjun Munda, head of the AAI, told the media when asked about Yadav's inclusion in India’s Olympic archery staff.
Munda was a former minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Modi, Munda was defeated in this year’s parliamentary elections.
Sharan Singh, former head of the Wrestling Federation of India, is also a member of Modi’s party. Previously, Singh was elected to the national parliament from Uttar Pradesh state. This year his son, who replaced him as the BJP candidate, won the parliamentary seat.
In December 2023, members of the Wrestling Federation of India elected Sanjay Singh, an ally of Sharan Singh, as the new president, over Anita Sheoran a wrestler. “Sanjay Singh, in a way, can be described as a representative of the old federation,” said Sharan Singh according to ESPN.
P.T. Usha, an Asian Games medal winning runner, is the president of the Indian Olympic Association. But, as with wrestling and archery, it is politicians, not athletes, who wield power in sports and athletic governing bodies in India. In fact, only three of the 19 members on the Archery Association executive committee are sports figures.
At the Paris Olympics, India won one silver and four bronze medals. It finished 71st in the medals tally, while the countries with which it is compared economically were far ahead: China ranked 2nd, with 91 medals, including 40 gold, Brazil 20th, and South Africa 44th.
Every four years, Indians get angry as they are reminded that India’s medal wins at the Olympics would have been far higher if the governing bodies of sports and athletics in the country are run professionally by leading sports figures. Hence it is not surprising that, in ten hours, Rathee’s video on wrestler Phogat’s struggles has already gotten nearly five million views.
Under South Korean coach Oh Seon Tek French archers won a silver and a bronze at the recent Paris Olympics. China’s Lia Jiaman won a silver medal coached by another South Korean, Kwon Yong-hak. South Korea continued its domination in archery, winning a total of seven medals, five gold, one silver, and one bronze in Paris.
Woong-ki’s contract with the Indian archery association expires at the end of this month. He told the Hindustan Times, “I do not want to continue anymore. I just want to go back to South Korea.”