The Olympics , considered to be the greatest sporting
spectacle is over. It was two weeks of sheer joy to see athletes bear fruit for
the immense toil they have been through for many years. There were so many
landmark achievements. Phelps fairytale ending, Bolt’s adrenaline thumping
sprints to gold, USA’s continuing domination
in spite of the Chinese coming really close, Great Britain’s fantastic performance and so many
to speak on. As Indians we should be really happy with our record medal haul. Wait-a-minute?
Should we really be? There are few things that still irk me. There are few
things that still make me sad.
We might have won
six medals but should we really be happy with this haul. How many new stars has
our system brought in? There might be few exceptions like VijayKumar and may be
even Kashyap. Otherwise it was almost
the same lot of Narang,Nehwal,Sushil,Yogeshwar that we still were depending to
win medals this time. When China can come up with almost 6-7 players to tackle Saina, why can’t we come up with
more women badminton players. This situation is applicable to all sports. Why
did someone like Deepika Kumari who is No1 in the world flop like she did in
London? How long can we keep on blaming the politicians who run the sporting
federations in our country . Our politicians distributed crores of money to our
deserving medal winners. But how much money is actually going to develop the
infrastructure at the grass root level?
Are we really serious about Olympic sports in our country.
Is sports part of our life and culture? We still want our kids to become engineers
and doctors and work in the blood sucking MNC’s. We just go with the herd
mentality of going with the populist opinion and never encourage our kids to
indulge in any of their interests just because we don’t see a future in it. Now
with T20 and IPL throwing great options of becoming millionaires even before
they hatch from their shells, will budding youngsters think of any other sport
other than cricket. Obviously we are not China who are obsessed with winning
gold medals and they start training kids at a very young age to become future Olympic
champions. They even partition a certain percentage of their GDP just to train
athletes to become future champions. Let us not get in to a bashing game of
constantly blaming out sporting federations. What are the steps that can be
taken to realistically improve our current situation?
To start with,
atleast one sport other than cricket should be made compulsory from the school
level. And just to make our parents happy we could also award marks. How many
play grounds does our children have just to run. It’s a real tough ask with the
shocking real estate exploitation in our country where every possible empty
space is screwed. Though we should not forget the contribution of corporates like
Mittal Champions trust, Olympic gold quest , Monnet group who were responsible
for training and providing infrastructure to many of our Olympians we still
need a lot of investment from the corporate to take Olympic sport seriously
other than cricket. We can start with small steps by trying to master one
sport. Like Jamaicans are known for their sprinting, Uzbeks for weightlifting ,Chinese
for badminton and table tennis, the U.S for swimming we also could possibly
concentrate on one particular sport to become total conquerors. Sport like
shooting, wrestling and boxing are bright prospects. We also need an able minister
for sports. Mr Maken looks solid and promising and he has even vouched that we
will win 25 medals by 2020. But governments might change. Some other person
might become the minister and we are not sure if we will get the same level of commitment
and zest from him. Rampant corruption and the undying will to hold on to the
power positions of these multiple federations will not help things. Things need
to change and they need to change big time.
This article is not to bash anyone or belittle the fantastic
achievements of our Olympians. This also might look like a desperate attempt by
a novice writer to improve the sporting situation in our country .With the sports
federations are run in our country, the fact that our legendary Olympians have still
managed to bring laurels to our country is magnificent. For a change let us celebrate
the grit and determination of the legendary Marykoms, Sushils, VijayKumars ,Sainas,
Yogeshwars,Narangs and let us hope this brings many budding athletes to take Olympic
sport as a serious career option and let us hope for a gold rush four years
down the line at Rio.Cherios!!!
