Literally, a one-man team

[user-Narotham Reddy]

From: Joydeep Mitra <joy...@bcmp.med.harvard.edu>

Literally, a one-man team

India's only representative to Winter Olympics can do it all,
including waiting around to carry the flag
BY MITCH ALBOM

(Mitch Albom is a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press.)

-Knight Ridder Newspapers
Published in the Akron Beacon Journal - Wednesday,
NAGANO, JAPAN February 18, 1998

His work here is done, his competition long since over, but he
stays in the Olympic village, day after day. He cannot go home
yet. If he did, there'd be no one to carry his flag in the
Closing Ceremonies. Never mind that his country is the second
largest in the world. Never mind that it has three times the
population of the United States.

He is the only one here. You've heard of one in a million?

Try one in 900 million.

``Did they at least give you a uniform?'' I ask 16-year-old
Shiva Keshavan, who represents the entire Olympic team
of India.

``We had something for the Opening Ceremonies,'' he says, ``but I
wouldn't call it a uniform. It was a jacket and pants.''

``India's colors?''

``No, it was blue and red. I don't know why they picked these
colors. In India's flag there is no blue or red. I think it was a
rush job.''

A rush job?

``Also, they sent these black plastic shoes, but they didn't ask
what size. They were very tight. My competition was the next
day, and the whole night, my feet were hurting.''

To hear Shiva talk, you'd think he was competing for the
tiniest of island nations, not a country of more than a million
square miles.

But despite India's enormity, it treats the Winter Olympics like
a village spelling bee. Shiva, who competes in luge, receives no
funds from his government. No national training. No equipment. He
has to borrow a sled..

They didn't even show his event on Indian TV. ``I keep calling
home, telling my friends to please tape the Olympics, but they
say they are not showing the Olympics anywhere.''

Nine hundred million potential viewers. No air time.
Walking tall

I first became aware of India's curious attitude toward the
Winter Games when I interviewed two of its skiers back in
1992. That year, they were India's only representatives. I
remember them saying their favorite part of the Olympics was the
ski lift, since, in their country, there was no such thing. They
had to walk up the mountain in order to ski down.

``I know those guys!'' Shiva says, when I mention this to him.
``Where I live is near where they live. They told you the
truth. When we ski, we have to walk up. Sometimes you only
get one run a day.''

Shiva lives in a small village in the Himalayan mountains. His
mother and father run an Italian restaurant. No, that is not a
typo. An Italian restaurant in India.

``My mother is Italian,'' Shiva explains. ``She's the cook.''

Shiva and his younger brother share a room above the restaurant,
as do his parents. They all share one bathroom. We are not
talking Aspen here. But we are talking Olympic spirit. Shiva left
his home to try luge after an international recruitment came to
his region and put him on a wheeled sled that rolled down the
streets. Shiva showed potential. He was invited to Europe for a
two-week training course.

Of course, to get to Europe, all he had to do was raise the money

for a ticket from New Delhi -- and then drive to the
airport. From where he lives, that takes two days. Two days to
the airport?

So much for changing your flight at the last minute.
Remaining humble

Isn't it funny? In America, we are bombarded with Olympic stories.
We get ``Up Close and Personal'' with every medal contender.

We'll see the winners in commercials and ice shows. We
figure everyone with an Olympic dream is worth profiling.
Imagine, then, how Shiva Keshavan feels. He is the only one of
his nation's 900 million people to experience these Games, and
there is no one here from India to even record his
presence. When he returns home next week, he will have seen
something that no one for thousands and thousands of miles will
have seen. For the record -- and maybe someone in New Delhi will
pick this up -- Shiva, with less than four months of
actual luge training under his belt, finished the singles
competition a respectable 28th, ahead of every Asian
competitor except one Japanese slider. His father, who
could only afford to come here by staying in the Olympic Village
as a coach, was with Shiva in the start hut.

``He said to me, `Don't feel like you have to prove anything,'
'' Shiva recalls. ``But I felt like I did. I felt like I
was representing my whole country, and it
would not be nice to crash.''

He did not crash. He finished all four runs. And when he was
done, he says a flushed feeling came over him, ``as if all the
work had come to fruit.''

Of course, your fruit depends on your tree. Sometimes you get
rich. Sometimes you get TV cameras. And sometimes, all you get is
a jacket with the wrong colors and a pair of shoes that don't
fit. But the Olympics are still the Olympics. So this weekend,
one more time, Shiva will wear those bad clothes for a good
reason.

``No one will carry the flag if not me. When I did it in the
Opening Ceremonies, I felt so proud I felt like crying. I said to
myself, `This, I will remember all my life.' ''

Now all they have to do back home is ask him about it.