Billionaire Helps An Indian Archer Aim for Olympics

At the Athens Olympics in 2004, steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, like millions of other Indian sports fans, was distressed: There was hardly anyone to cheer for.
Reuters reviewed some of the country's memorable Olympic moments, and its best bets for a win in the 2008 Beijing games.
Though India is a budding superpower and, after China, the most-populous nation in the world, its Olympic record is dreadful. And the government's efforts to groom future Olympians have been inadequate. In Athens, India took home just one medal, a silver for shooting -- less than the medal counts of Zimbabwe and North Korea. Archrival China won 32 golds, second only to the U.S. "That really disappointed me," Mr. Mittal says.

Now Mr. Mittal, 57 years old, who left India as a young man to amass one of the world's largest personal fortunes, is trying to do something about it. The billionaire has committed $10 million so far to the Mittal Champions Trust, a nonprofit effort to promote sporting excellence in India. The trust aims to improve India's Olympic record -- at least a bit -- by spotting a few promising athletes in this nation of 1.1 billion and introducing them to the kind of modern sports training that smaller, poorer countries mastered decades ago. At least 10 of its trained athletes will compete for India in Beijing.
One of the brightest prospects today is Mangal Singh Champia, a 24-year-old archer from the village of Ichakuti in Jharkhand, one of India's poorest states. Children in the village, which has no electricity, use bows and arrows to shoot birds; adults use them to kill wildcats, lions and boars.
Mr. Singh first picked up a bow and arrow at the age of 8 or 9, he says. For sport, his friends would take potshots at kingfishers and wild doves. He bought his first bow when he was 11 for six rupees (15 cents). "I told my father I was buying a book," he says.
He says he first heard of archery as an Olympic sport while listening to his cousin's radio during the Barcelona Summer Games in 1992. "I was thinking, this game of my village is being played abroad, I wish I was there."
Over the next few years, he began to build a reputation as an archer at local and state competitions. Hired to compete in archery contests for the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, he spent time in his early twenties there. His main income was prize money. A typical first prize was about $600. He spent days in cramped train compartments en route to tournaments. He had no fixed training program and practiced only when he felt like it, firing a hand-me-down bow at worn targets.
Tiring Circuit
As things stood, Mr. Singh probably would have continued to pound this tiring circuit and might never have had a chance to realize his Olympic dream. The Indian government's priorities have been to promote basic access to sports rather than foster a cadre of world-beating athletes. Of about 770 million people under the age of 35, only 50 million have access to any organized sport or games, according to government calculations. The country's main training body, the Sports Authority of India, trains only 13,000 or so athletes at its facilities.
Indian sport also faces all the broader problems plaguing the nation, starting with poverty and a delinquent public-educational system. Families, understandably, have been more keen on urging their children to achieve academic success than athletic glory.
Cricket Power
It's not that Indians are uninterested in athletics. Sports were encouraged under the maharajas who long ago ruled swaths of the country. India is a major power in cricket. In the first half of the 20th century, it was pre-eminent in men's field hockey, winning successive Olympic gold medals from 1928 to 1956, and then again in 1964 and 1980. But when field hockey switched to artificial surfaces from grass, many clubs couldn't afford to make the change, and the country's standing slipped. At Athens, India came in seventh in the hockey competition.
"Looking at the size of Indian democracy, I think Indian athletes need much more support," says Mr. Mittal, who plays an occasional game of badminton and likes to cycle around Hyde Park in London, where he now lives.His Indian program, founded in November 2005, aims to give its athletes everything they need to succeed. Beyond world-class coaching and facilities, athletes get emotional support, says Manisha Malhotra, the trust's administrator. It backs shooters, boxers, a swimmer, and badminton and squash players -- a total of 32 athletes so far. Scores more have applied and been rejected.
Mr. Singh joined the program in February 2006, and now lives in a training camp about a two-hour drive from the high-tech hub of Bangalore. The trust typically pays athletes around $125 to $250 a month. Mr. Singh sends much of that money home for his family and younger siblings' education. "I feel happy that I don't have to ask for money from home," says the archer.
One of the biggest challenges has been to improve Mr. Singh's discipline, says his 51-year-old coach, Sumesh Chandra Roy, a former archery coach for the Indian army. He now has Mr. Singh and the other handful of archers on a strict schedule.
They arise around 5 a.m., stretch, and then go for a long run or walk. Then comes yoga, with its concentration on breathing, meditation and chanting. After breakfast, target practice.
One day recently, a group of the Mittal archers fired six arrows a set at targets 230 feet away over the course of three minutes, then sauntered over to collect them, chatting along the way. Mr. Singh now shoots with a Win&Win bow worth about $3,500. The archers frequently replace their targets. "When the face of the board is new, we can aim better," he says.
Goddess of Food
Lunch is Indian vegetarian food -- rice, lentil and vegetable curries, yogurt and dessert -- all served up in a noisy cafeteria named for Annapoorna, the Hindu goddess of food.
After a rest, they do more target practice, followed by weight training, dinner and night practice for those who want it. They also spend time with nutritionists, sports psychologists, physiotherapists, sports-medicine doctors and fitness experts. The trust is "trying to instill a work ethic of fitness," says Ms. Malhotra, the program's administrator.
At the 15th Asian Archery Championships in China last September, Mr. Singh got the highest overall score in an early round, in one of the world's biggest archery tournaments, with competitors from across Asia.
He was beaten in a semifinal knockout, but his sharp shooting had won for India a place in the men's individual archery event in Beijing. He is not a shoo-in for that slot. The final say on who represents India rests with India's Archery Association, which will make a decision closer to the Beijing games in August. "We have said that he has to keep his stature," says Vijaykumar Malhotra, the association's president.
Mr. Singh says he is determined to reap the rewards of all this training. "I am so fired up that whatever's expected of me to win, whatever effort's expected, I will do it," he says.reuters