Olympics fever fails to catch on

A free drink for every wicket, cocktails, snacks and a 16-dish buffet -everything that the Indian entertainment and hotel industry did during the time of World Cup Cricket last year, was missing this Olympics.

A free drink for every wicket, cocktails, snacks and a 16-dish buffet - everything that the Indian entertainment and hotel industry did during the time of World Cup Cricket last year, was missing this Olympics.

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In a country where "Cricket is Religion", there were very few who did something special for the Olympics. Moreover, Olympics has never been able to generate so much interest because of the poor performance of our teams there, says Shivjit Majithia, Director (Operations), DV8 Restaurant, here.

"People are only interested when India is playing in a big way or they are in finals," says Majithia, and cites a survey conducted just at the beginning of Olympics in Delhi.

"When asked to choose between watching the tri-series cricket and Olympics, over 65 per cent people preferred cricket," he says, just because the enthusiasm was not there, nobody did much.

"Watching world cup matches on the big screen and enjoying the favourite dishes of cricketers became more of a 'fad' with people and an advertising gimmick, for hotels and restaurants. But there were very few events this time," says Madhulika Bhattacharya, Director, Public Relations, The Park.