Author: Sharmistha Gooptu

Paris was part chaotic, on the edge, and teeming with security personnel and police in the days ahead of the Olympic Games. Once the tenseness of the opening ceremony was done, the city got back to its normal pace. Metro services were back, but there was still a huge police presence everywhere. For anybody stepping into Paris, the signs were everywhere. I left Paris early the day after the closing ceremony. A team member who stayed behind tells me that while there is still a lot of police there, it’s more relaxed around the metro stations and public places. It’s…

Of my fan encounters during the Paris Olympics, I will especially remember the medal winning hockey match at the Yves du Manoir stadium. We had reached the venue later than anticipated and were scrambling to get some fan reactions ahead of the match. And true to hockey’s standing as India’s national sport, fans had come from far and wide. There was a lady from Brussels, and a family from London. Of the latter, only the father was Indian, but his British wife and children were were cheering for team India. Yet another family were Indians settled in Paris. The young…

I will always remember a smiling and very girl-next-door Vinesh Phogat happily eating a pizza with some of our team members in Birmingham, the day after she had won the Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games. I had seen her medal winning match, but I first met her the next day when we were going in for Nikhat Zareen’s bout. We spotted Vinesh and Anshu Malik, her fellow wrestler who had won bronze, hanging outside the entrance of the boxing venue. They didn’t have tickets and wanted to watch the bout, and I was surprised. I remembered that even medal…

A couple of days ago, I had written a piece on this platform, speaking about sport as a tool for protest. I had cited women who had combatted the difficulty of their various circumstances to play sport as a form of protest, whether playing in shorts against social norms, or giving a miss to an arranged marriage pressed upon them by families, to follow their calling. I had written this in a state of distress following the horrific incident of rape and murder of a woman intern at Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital. Women taking up sport, especially in India, has…

An integral part of any mega games is its integration with the city and its public. On the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympics, a colleague and I had made a trip to Parc Monceau, one of the fan parks set up for the Games. This was on the day of the high alert and high security. The entire city of Paris was on the edge with the police swarming the streets, which were otherwise pretty deserted. Parisians had possibly retreated indoors, or as some indicated, might have gone away that weekend. Train services were disrupted and we…

In her third Independence Day speech, President Draupadi Murmu spoke about affirmative action and the opening up of opportunity through the social justice agenda. She quoted B.R. Ambedkar: “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy”. As we approach the 2024 Paralympic Games after a relatively underwhelming Olympics campaign that was dogged by controversy, how many have moved back into the cricket/football grid, bidding adieu to multi-sport? But wait, if we are talking about social democracy shouldn’t we be gearing up to cheer our para-athletes with the same passion as our hockey team or…

Sport has had a long history as a tool of protest. Historians of sport can tell better than myself of the instances in our struggle against a colonial power when sport became a much larger manifestation, of the struggle and resilience of a colonial people against the colonial masters. A man no less than Swami Vivekananda had called upon colonised Indians to play football and build their physical strength to combat the British. Mohun Bagan’s victory of 1911, beating the Brits, is national lore, and is still celebrated as a turning moment in the nationalist imaginary. In the popular imaginary…

As we still await the sole arbitrator’s decision in the Vinesh Phogat versus UWW and IOC case, I write this article from the perspective of gender sensitivity. Somebody who knows a good deal about diet had told me — you know, the intermittent fasting rules have been created keeping the male system in mind. As with so many other things in life, the paradigm is a male one. But the fact of the matter is male and female bodies are vastly different. Female bodies are what they are because of our hormones which take us on widely varying trips depending…

We travelled back from Paris yesterday. As we were getting ready to leave the hotel in the morning, a colleague who had already reached the airport called to say, “Don’t forget to wear your media accreditations; it will make your life easier.” As anticipated, the whole world and its cousins were leaving from Charles de Gaulle International Airport and there was more than obvious chaos – not least because airport personnel seemed to not treat the day’s heavy traffic with a greater urgency than usual. For us, the members of the media, including photo journalists and broadcasters who have to…

Sharmistha Gooptu in Paris As a woman covering her first Olympic Games, I run the risk of being told that I’m making it all about the women – but the truth of the matter is this Olympics for India had its larger national embodiment through the fates of some of our women athletes – whether in their triumph or their tragic failure, and then a certain disgrace. Let’s start with our star of the moment – the young Manu Bhaker- who has braved all odds since her tryst at the Tokyo Games and is now the poster girl. Manu embodies…