Numerous readers have been sending us tips regarding Raj Bhavsar, an alternate on the U.S. men’s gymnastics team who will get to compete for the gold in Beijing after all. The space opened up on the team after star gymnast Paul Hamm was forced to withdraw due to injury.
Bhavsar was an alternate in 2004 as well, but didn’t get to compete. Despite a discouraging few years, Bhavsar continued to practice and train hard this spring and summer on the off-chance that a space might open up. Now his perseverance has paid off, and we wish him all the best. Based on what his colleagues and trainers have said about Bhavsar, as well as his own quotes in USA Today and The Houston Chronicle, he seems like a class act. (The ESPN story on Bhavsar also talks about how Bikram Yoga has helped him learn to concentrate better in the past year, a fact that I find quite interesting.)
NBC also had a nice profile of Bhavsar during the 2008 trials:
And you can see him performing a whole routine on rings here. (The dude has some serious biceps!)
Along with the stories about Raj Bhavsar (an Indian-American), KXB linked in the News Tab to a story in Foreign Policy about the “world’s worst Olympians,” where India actually tops the list (only 17 medals in its entire history). There is an inevitable discussion waiting to happen there, on why India always does so poorly (as I recall we had a version of it two years ago, when the World Cup was on). I don’t have any big answers, other than the obvious ones given in Foreign Policy: lack of sports venues, lack of school sports funding, lack of investment in preparing athletes for the Olympics. I don’t know whether “culture” is also a factor; I tend to think not.
At any rate, this year India is sending 57 atheletes to the Olympics, including the Paes and Bhupathi team for tennis doubles (where I suspect they might have a real shot). We might profile a few of the athletes in subsequent posts, depending on what comes up upon typing their names into the Google. Pakistan, for its part, is sending 23 athletes; Sri Lanka is sending eight (or maybe seven, depending on how we add 3+4); and Bangladesh is also sending a small contingent, to compete for wild card spots.
It could also be bad nutrition and terrible maternal health.
Yeah, the fact that our food is so oily the US would declare war on it, just might have something to do with it.
india has the lowest rate of alzheimer’s in the world
so we’ll make sure to remember how fat and unathletic we are.
Sri Lanka is sending eight (or maybe seven, depending on how we add 3+4)
Perhaps this isn’t merely an arithmetical error: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/30/olympicgames2008.gender
I watch Raj Bhavsar’s clips and think he fit for olympid. best of luck. you can do it. I awaiting your game.
Did Pam Anderson pay for him too?
What’s up with all this crap about Indians not being athletic. don’t forget dumbbells are Indian(rather India inspired).
Genetics has to be a large part of the answer; people like bhavsar are the rare exceptions that proves the rule (if both his parents are from India); I am pretty sure that the woman gymnast who represented US in the last olympics (if she did) was half Indian.
it is a struggle for me to remain fit (forget muscular) and within the normal weight range, despite running quite a bit (average 3 miles a day), refraining from extra calories, and doing light weights.. Same for my daughter, who despite a lot of training, struggles with upper body exercises (pull ups) while many of her caucasian friends do it without any training! Some indians who did well in Men’s Tennis (the Krishnans) were very poor athletes (i.e. they over-achieved).
a simple prediction would be that mixed indian-americans (with european or other admixture) would do better at sports.. we have the example of anglo-indians who dominated many sports when they had a presence in India.
india isnt that good at cricket either and the standard of soccer is terrible.. barely edging out Afghanistan (the 181st ranked country) in a recent match. Lots of dirt poor african countries with terrible facilities are way ahead on the medal count.
Maybe the benefits of genetics (low Alzheimer rate etc) is the other side of the coin.
I think part of the reason India has such a weak olympic presence is genetic. There have been a lot of recent studies showing that certain gene alleles that make people more susceptible to diabetes and cardiovascular disease are found in relatively high frequency in India. I think Indians on a whole are just less genetically athletic, we tend to have more flabby bodies with higher body fat concentrations. It could also be bad nutrition and terrible maternal health.
I just find your statement so vacuous. India spends very little (and I read somewhere) and is one of the countries that spends the least on its olympic athlete training.
China in contrast, though also a poor country with millions living below the poverty line, spends a ton; It’d be great to root for an olympic medal field hockey team. I still remember my dad speaking with pride about their accomplishments in the past. I’d like to know how much they spent in the past compared to other countries. How much investment is used for the current crop of say field hockey team medal contestants compared to the Indian team; what facilities they have as compared to the Indian teams, etc.
I think the US and African Americans in the US also have a high rate of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Not sure what India’s rate is compared with other countries.
Here’s a good article on exactly how much China spends on its athletes and the potential cost of spending:
http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/opinion/costly-china-olympic-gold-1654.html
according to the article:
“Especially for a country that still has more than 200 million living below the poverty line, some believe China’s anticipated high medal ranking represents a poor allocation of resources.”
“After the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the budget for the China Sports Bureau raised from three billion yuan ($USD 439 million) to five billion yuan ($732 million) per year. During the four years of preparation for the Athens Olympics, China spent 20 billion yuan ($3 billion), but the expense earned China 32 gold medals, making the cost for each gold medal nearly 700 million yuan ($102 million). Due to this high price for Olympic glory, China’ gold medals have been called “The most expensive gold medals in the world.—
“Chinese track star Liu Xiang won a 110-meter hurdle at the Athens Olympics. Before this, his annual expense was about three million yuan, which included an environmentally-friendly running course for over a million yuan and several hundred thousand yuan for a new set of hurdles. The amount China spent on Liu Xiang could equal several hundreds even thousands of Elementary Schools of Hope—charity schools for kids in poor areas of China.
Wu Shouzhang, vice chairman of China’s Olympic Committee commented that the total cost for this endeavor is very difficult to calculate. He adds that, besides Liu, there are also medical doctors, scientists, nutritionists, field workers, document workers, as well as early investments made by Shanghai, Liu’s home city.
According to the “Report on China’s Olympic Gold Medal†issued by the China Branding Research Institute, the commercial value for Liu Xiang’s gold metal was worth 461 million yuan ($67.5 million) last year.”
Wu Shouzhang, vice chairman of China’s Olympic Committee commented that the total cost for this endeavor is very difficult to calculate. He adds that, besides Liu, there are also medical doctors, scientists, nutritionists, field workers, document workers, as well as early investments made by Shanghai, Liu’s home city.
Which is why, if the mofo loses, his ass is sent up the YangTze
I bet there is a positive correlation, at the level of society, between age at first marriage and adult athletic accomplishment. 😉
50 · ananya said
Most Indians are not diagnosed for Alzheimers. They will just say grandpa has become old and blathering and ask him to sit in the corner.
Wu Shouzhang, vice chairman of China’s Olympic Committee commented that the total cost for this endeavor is very difficult to calculate. He adds that, besides Liu, there are also medical doctors, scientists, nutritionists, field workers, document workers, as well as early investments made by Shanghai, Liu’s home city.
Which is why, if the mofo loses, his ass is sent up the YangTze
By the way Shanghai has one of the highest rates of diabetes in China; and China is second to India in diabetes rates – though who’s to say about underreporting in both countries or in other countries:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-02/20/content_6468137.htm
http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/188903.htm
4 · Keralite said
Milkha Singh was sitting by a pool one day when a lady walked up to him and asked him if he was relaxing.
“No,” he replied, “I’m Milkha Singh.”
61 · Sil said
Not quite…yesterday on Charlie Rose one of the docs on a genome panel indicated that his alphabet had been diagnosed as susceptible to Alz. He clearly stated that Indians are less susceptible to Alz due to the spices we imbibe in curry. And so, he eats curry regularly
36 · Lily said
Congratulations to your husband, Lily! Your link didn’t work for me, but I found the full Canadian Olympic field hockey squad bios here:
http://www.fieldhockey.ca/e/nationalteams/men/bios
Pravin
I had a blogpost on this a while back. It isn’t just that Canada is in (and half the team is of Indian origin, some actually born there). Pakistan and China are both in, and China is in for both Men and Women.
I don’t think it is genetics or nutrition, though as noted in other threads, there are significant numbers of Indians who particularly lack good nutrition. But what about the rest? The ‘killer instinct’ and the ‘desire to win’ are important too.
Here is a short clip of Milkha Singh, who came closest to winning an Athletic medal for India – reminiscing about the Rome Olympics of 1960, especially how diligently he prepared for it over the previous 4 years – in Hindi with English subtitles – only to come in 4th in the finals, in what was not his personal best.
There’s also significant corruption in the sports federations, and at the selection stage, and mismanagement and ineptness and denial. Here’s a slightly longer set of clips of KPS Gill on IBNLive’s ‘Shoot-Out’ program. You can see how the normally confident anchor is reduced to a quaking, quivering wreck by the Supercop, who admits nothing and takes no responsibility for the hockey debacle. (He was later forced to resign as chief of the Indian Hockey Federation).
Ironically, I remember it used to be said in India that of all the sports Indians couldn’t do well at, gymnastics were up top, because the body build you needed for gymnastics was just not there (right, in all the seven, eight, nine hundred million… billion and a quarter Indians and counting). So Indian-Americans are showing that ‘conventional wisdom’ wrong, and thank God. And Indo-Canadians (and Pakistanis) are really showing India up in hockey. Bitter-sweet is the taste. Proud for Indians abroad, and sorry for India.
not sure if anyones already posted this, but bbc had a good mini history of some athletes India has sent to the Olympics over the years…
“The ‘Flying Sikh’ remembers”
Sports columnist Rohit Brijnath talks to the ‘Flying Sikh’ Milkha Singh, the finest athlete India has ever produced, ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
What a silly ignorant comment. A quick google search would make it clear that even when adjusted for age, people in the US are 4 times more likely to have this disease compared to people in India.
people who have the means to pay for their kids to get proffesional training would be too embarrassed to go to dinner parties and admit that beti or beta is going to be a sportsperson. years ago, an extremely wealthy relative of mine in mumbai was doing well professionally in tennis but when time came to make the decision whether to go for it or not, she chose not because of the kind of family friends around them. her dad was supportive but her mum is a bitchy socialite.
67 · RC said
Again, they are 4 times more likely in the US because the doctors “diagnose” them as such. Half the Indian rural population dont even have access to health care. and most of them dont even live up to 70 years old. Maybe you should google two things. One what is the life expectancy of Indians and two the meaning of diagnose.
Dinesh said …
ananya said …
In American culture, sports play a huge role and is considered a yardstick of human achievement. Athletic talent and achievement is considered something to be proud of. In India, it seems to be largely considered a frivolous leisurely activity.
I’m not sure I agree with Dinesh and think ananya’s comments are more on-target. My parents are both from India and I was born and raised in the U.S. I unfortunately have an athletic streak. In high school, I was encouraged to try out for cornerback on the football team, run the 100 meters, etc. by teachers and coaches due to very good quickness and footspeed.
I did run track and field in high school against my parents will (had to pay for my own uniform and shoes) in spite of discouraged and belittled for it by them. I dared not try out for the football team. The other kids parents would attend track meets and actually root for their children. Imagine that! I received more encouragement from my friends parents than from my own! I’m still bitter about their attitude towards sports to this day.
My niece has inherited athletic traits (she excels in both dance and soccer) and both my parents and much of her family on the father’s side are dismayed that her parents allow her to participates in athletic activities.
Don’t get me wrong though! India has more important things to worry about than snatching Olympic gold medals. Sanitation, health care, transportation, etc. I’m just saying I don’t believe genetics alone plays a huge role in India’s lack of Olympic success. Indian diet and culture simply isn’t conducive at all to producing Olympic caliber athletes.
But all that aside, I wish Raj the best of luck!
This is a bit like saying Indians must genetically be bad math because India only placed 31st in the 2008 international math Olympiad behind countries like Brazil, Khazakstan and Mongolia. Furthermore the highest ranking Indian only placed in the 63th percentile (bronze medalist).
However if you looked closer you would notice that Team USA which placed 3rd overall was 1/3 Indian American (quite an over representation), and both of the maccacas on the team were gold medalists (93 percentile).
I think genetics is a part of it, I don’t see a person who is not of West African descent winning the 100m anytime soon. There is no doubt sports at which even Indians can excel: wrestling, hockey, middle distance running, swimming, diving etc…
PS Indians definitely have the potential to go far in Gymnastics
Cultural norms + relative average affluence wouldn’t explain anglo-indian over representation ?
Sports in India is an activity for those with extra time and money. The Parsis were pretty disproportionately represented in cricket at one point.
I predict that people of Indian origin in affluent countries outside of India will do better on a proportionate basis than Indians in India.
May be you are a Doctor and researcher at UCLA who has published the findings that I mention. Or you have figured ‘it’ out. No more comments from me.
Our ancient sculpture idealized man boobed devas and badonkadonk apsaras. Why would mere mortals aspire to more? Problem solved. Next…..
73 · louiecypher said
Bwahahahahahahaha! Nice.
So there you have it–life imitates art and not the other way around. Two problems solved, louiecypher. High five.
Since africans tend to be the most genetically gifted athletes, an afro-desi admixture could produce the best results. Look at Sachin Tendulkar for example, India’s greatest sportsman. With his curly hair, facial features, physique and color he looks more like an afro-amerindian mix from Brazil or Central America than a typical desi.
69 · Sil said
76 · olaamigos said
Thank you for saying that. I was quite stunned that not only was that earlier commenter insistent about his claim that underdiagnosis undermined any claims about disease occurrence, but that he/she was so obnoxious and rude in repeatedly asserting their misconception.
i have a friend here in the U.K. who won the county (state) gymnastics championship when she was a teenager. she’s a doctor now. i also used to know a girl at school who was a musical violin playing genius. she gave it up and went to university to study economics. i don’t know what she’s doing now.
i’m a nutritionist and the rates of alzheimers and cancer are lower in desis living in the west as well. this is because the food we eat contain prevention qualities when it comes to some illnesses. turmeric prevents alzheimers and vegetables and lentils have antioxidants that prevent cancer. yes we are more prone to heart disease and diabetes due to being more sensitive to blood sugar issues. also, when i was training, the kind of digestive problems that caucasian people came in with were so bizarre. (i won’t go into the gory details here). desis don’t get these digestive problems because of the fibre in our diet. even if we eat crap after leaving home, the fact that we had this food growing up, helps to prevent future problems.
i’m not saying that it’s only desi food that’s good for health. i like the italian diet as well; cooked tomatoes have lycopene that are packed with antioxidants. french people drink lots of red wine which is good for the heart. japanese diet is good because of seafood.
i really think lack of enthusiasm for sports is more a cultural thing. there’s a british born desi punjabi girl in england who is a rugby player and she said that when she started playing, the other girls around her used to use the word ‘paki’ when referring to asians which is like calling african americans niggers. here in the uk if someone wants to be a soccer or rugby player they are going to have deal with hanging out with really stupid people in the locker room and it’s not nice to be the only asian among these beer swilling uncultured people.
i admire amir khan though, he’s a successful boxer from england and he’s won most of his fights. he’s quite down to earth and is really popular.
http://www.amirkhan-boxing.com
73 · louiecypher said
!!!hilarious
65 · chachaji said
there’s a player named Gabbar Singh! they’re sure to win 🙂
Years ago Milkha Singh, who was born in 1938, became an Indian hero because even though he did not win a medal at the Olympics he broke the previous Olympic record for the fastest 400 meters: Rome, 1960. We need a present and a future that is at least as good as the past.
I think India’s poor performance in athletics is prob. due to the attitude people have towards physical fitness. Most Indian parents want their kids to study, study, study. Athletic activities are considered a waste of time. I’m Sri Lankan and parents over here have a more welcoming attitude towards sports I think (mens sana in copore sanae and all that jazz). Of course Sri Lanka is not exactly a sporting powerhouse either but I think considering our size we do OK in comparison to India. Of course my Indian friends seem to think Sri Lankans are more athletic, we certainly do fight a lot LOL !!!
77 · Confused said
As opposed to thinking curry prevents Alzhemimers? really? then why aren’t the “doctors” injecting patients with curry to cure. Hey how about developing a curry vaccine for westerners to prevent Alzheimers?
76 · olaamigos said
Here is a link for you on what prevents or rather helps a little bit. And all those talk about google search, maybe you guys should actually do it instead of just repeating old wives tale that curry is the elixir of life.
85 · Sil said
I was talking about this fact that you were insisting on.
as for “curry” (or curcumin as scientists prefer to call it), there is reason to believe that it has protective effects against alzheimers. it is not merely an “old wives tale”, unless you have some information about all the ucla researchers on the paper being 60+ suburban grandmoms.
From the article link you provided The body of research has prompted the UCLA Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) to begin human clinical trials to further evaluate its protective and therapeutic effects.
In other words nothing scientific have been established, and the support group has sent the information to researchers. And we are already on the streets celebrating effects of curcumin.
Well, enough scientific cause in animal trials “have” been established by researchers to actually begin human clinical trials. Of course, cures in animals do not always translate to cures in humans, although they often provide a strong indication, which is why they are in the process of trialing it.
From the article:
The spice has also been found to correct the cystic fibrosis defect in mice, prevent the onset of alcoholic liver disease and may slow down the blood cancer multiple myeloma as well as multiple sclerosis. Reporting in the 7 December online edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers from the University of California Los Angeles also revealed that curcumin is more effective in inhibiting formation of the protein fragments than many other drugs being tested as Alzheimer’s treatments.
Also, researchers in biochemistry and genetics who work on mice and other animals are not usually considered “support group” or “old wives”.
I realize you have dug yourself into a rhetorical hole with all the nastiness you’ve been throwing about. And you seem to think there is some shame in admitting you’re wrong, by first refusing to acknowledge your gross misunderstanding about how sampling works, and then flailing about to desperately find some other hokey probable cause to distract people with. So, I won’t trouble you further with annoying facts.
89 · Confused said
And I realize you have suddenly back pedalled that it may or may not work! And I still stand by the underdiagnosis of Alzheimers in India. Other than cities nobody there even bother to diagnose Alzheimers. 4.4 times is a joke. I don’t see any data from your sampling plan to prove otherwise. A farmer living in the villages after 70 (if at all) doesnt even go to the doctor for memory loss. And even if he does nobody diagnoses him for Alzheimers. And it is the same reason Indians do not have that many psychiatric patients, if they are not counted then they are not part of your sampling plan, . Hell, just counting the number of neuroscientists will prove there are 4.4 times less neurosurgeons and neurologists in India who can diagnose that and probably 10 times less neurospecialists than the cities.
Milkha Singh’s son Jeev is ranked number 66 in the world in Golf. Also many people India see education as the only way to better their lives. As others before had mentioned, there was no real money in sports besides cricket.
NW said …
I completely agree. I keep hearing genetics this, genetics that, blah blah blah. These are excuses, not reasons. Amardeep stated he tends to think culture isn’t a huge factor and I very strongly disagree. Culture has EVERYTHING to do with India’s lack of success in international athletics. The attitude NW described was exactly the attitude of my parents as I was growing up in the U.S. Sports and physical fitness are completely irrelevant according to them.
Again, don’t get me wrong! In India, poverty, health care, sanitation, transportation, general infrastructure, etc., are far more important issues than establishing athletic programs geared at success in the Olympics, and I would never advocate some kind of governmental priority be placed on success in international athletics. But to say that culture is a non-factor is absurd.
90 · Sil said
I don’t think I “was dancing in the streets celebrating the effects of curcumin, or as you seem to think, injecting patients with curry”, or frontpedaling anywhere to have backpedaled anywhere. There is clear probable cause that curcumin has benefits based on fairly extensive and solid researchers, and it is a strong current hypothesis among researchers. I don’t see how that is contradictory to anything else I ever said.
And further, my earliest comment was only expressing rank astonishment about your complete lack of comprehension about basic methodology. As for how sampling works, if you are really interested, you can try and understand how medical researchers determine the relative incidence of diseases etc. by reading up some basic literature on epidemiology and statistics, before persisting with assertions which are completely irrelevant to the claims at hand.
Do you really think that the research community is so unaware of the relative lack in medical care among India, as compared to the US that they needed a short-fused commenter on Sepia to tell them how stupid their claims are? Is it such a little known fact that medical care for the poor in India is not exactly first rate, and is it likely that somebody will make unqualified non-normalized claims about disease occurrence between India and the US? Have you even bothered to read the abstract of articles that actually evaluate Alzheimer incidence such as this which even make the specific observation (which I italicize below for the reading challenged) that you tout around, like you were a naked Archimedes who suddenly found water on his bathroom tiles.
There is a paucity of epidemiological data about dementia in India, where it is ignored and dismissed as senility. It is important to define and identify the treatable causes since it can initiate the process of the patient’s (and his family’s) adaptation to managing the disease symptoms.
90 · Sil said
And in case the point is still not clear to you, not a single person in this thread has disputed this claim. But it is irrelevant to establishing the lower incidence of Alzheimer’s in India. Most people over the age of 6 months to a year know that the ball still exists even when it has rolled behind the couch and is no longer visible.
@ 70 – Another ABCD : My commiserations. I hope u are supporting your niece and telling the rest of the family to Shut the FU.
74 · Harbeer said
See? MFAs have been screwing things up since Taxila University started granting this cursed degree circa 300 BC
96 · louiecypher said
Huh? I don’t follow. Are you saying that MFAs “screw things up” by making art because people then imitate that art?
Your previous comment was funny. This one is just confusing. You should have quit while you were ahead.
Culture has EVERYTHING to do with India’s lack of success in international athletics.
No, it has to do with what sports are highlighted in the international olympics. If certain activities were made into sports at the olympic level, India would clean house.
It is interesting to see how perceptions of toughness are formed. I must admit that I don’t think of my fellow Indian-Americans or their middle/uppermiddle class relations back “home” as tough. But I have always thought the avg Indian in India is pretty damn tough in a scrappy way. The closest comparison I can think of is Jewish-Americans…they have an undercurrent of self deprecating humor about their supposed lack of athleticism. But their ancestor immigrants who first came to this country were certainly tough with a significant number of sports heroes. And Israelis (let’s put aside politics for a moment) who are largely from the same Ashkenazi stock are thought of as physically tough by admirers and detractors alike. Don’t draw conclusions based on the atypical segment of India that we represent
It’s mostly about nutrition and the surplus that allows for people to invest time in non-economic endeavors like sports and art. I think everything else is a redherring. Yes, we are predisposed to cardiac illness but predisposition does not = certainty. And while we may not have the same % of people over six feet tall as N. Europeans, we certainly have enough to find/develop champion swimmers with the right investment. Focus on health & education and 20 years from now we can have a decent showing without any govt. investment
they have an undercurrent of self deprecating humor about their supposed lack of athleticism.
True. I had a Jewish friend who said people would give him snide looks because he was a Jewish person playing baseball. I told him, compared to their perception of me, you might as well be Lance Armstrong, Mike Tyson, Carl Lewis, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretsky, and Derek Jeter combined.