The Press Trust of India's assessment of Luger Shiva Keshavan's performance in Sochi was blunt: he sucked.
The 32-year-old placed 37th out of 39 competitors after his final two runs on Sunday. This wasn't a surprising result. He had finished 28th in Nagano, 33rd in Salt Lake City, 25th in Torino and 29th in Vancouver.
There's more to this story.
The fact Keshavan competed after falling off his sled during a training run was a marvel in itself.
His training regimen on the highways of the Himalayas became a internet sensation because, well, take a look for yourself.
Keshavan is an active promoter of winter sports in India, conducting talent searches in association with the Indian Amateur Luge Association. He helped develop India's Junior National Luge team. The man is proud of where he comes from, even though his results on the international stage do not warrant the attention received by the Tendulkars, or Dhonis.
Keshavan walked into Fisht Olympic Stadium on Friday alongside countrymen Nadeem Iqbal and Himanshu Thakur under the International Olympic Committee flag.
Why? Because the IOC and India's Olympic Association are idiots.
Corruption-wise this is Ali vs. Frazier, WCW vs. WWF and Bird vs. Magic rolled into one.
On one side we have the IOC, a cadre of golden generation busybodies happy to hurl accusations of wrongdoings without looking at themselves in the mirror. "The contracts were given to people who already had a foot in the door. We know it," railed senior member Gian Franco Kasper on the 'construction mafia' that built the venues in Sochi.
Kasper's former colleague Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001, presided over the creation of the kind of vote selling that saw Salt Lake City 'win' the 2002 Games because it had the best lobbyists.
The IOC suspended the Indian Olympic Association on December 4, 2012 on the basis of corruption, government interference and not following IOC guidelines.
To be fair, it had a point.
Several members of the IOA had been charged with crimes. They were suspended after electing several tainted officials, including Lalit Bhanot, who spent more than 10 months in jail on corruption charges related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.
In December the IOC said they would lift the suspension if the Indian Olympic Association held new elections before February 7th. They held them today, of all days.
“Following the executive board decision in December, the IOC is considering all necessary arrangements for the Indian athletes who have qualified for the Sochi Games to take part as Independent Olympic Participants under the Olympic flag,” the IOC said in January.
“It is a sad and embarrassing situation that Indian sport has been put in,” Keshavan said after the ruling. “People around the world know about the failure of our systems and about corruption and bad governance in sports.”
The Olympics - and the nationalism and jingoism it manifests in us - will never provide the elixir for all the ails a country, but symbolism is important.
For children and their parents in India, watching on Friday as three Indian athletes marched in the parade of nations at the Winter Olympics without a nation, the moment was lost.
Could the IOC have made an exception? Making exceptions is their raison d'être.
Two of the most corrupt, inefficient institutional bodies in the world conspired to rob Keshavan, Iqbal and Thakur of their moment; their families' moment.
Unfortunately the damage inflicted wasn't limited to that group.
