And so the 2016 summer
Olympics are over and now is the time to sit down and analyse a bit about the
epic event. Everyone out there in India, experienced or inexperienced, a champ
or a loser, literate or illiterate, “cricketer” or a “non-cricketer” has his or
her take on the summer extravaganza. Even I fall under the first and the last
category having grown up watching the games as a cricket fan as many in Mumbai
are. Many like me, I reckon, have watched the games being partially illiterate about
all the rules. But then we all are proud of the athletes who represented our
country. We should be! Whether or not they win medals, we should be proud of
the fact that these very people just represented the 1.25 billion who cheered
or jeered them.
Let’s start with some facts now! What
started as a formality of a lone athlete (Norman Pritchard in 1900 in Paris)
has grown into a contingent of a national record of 118 in 2016. But the change
in the medal tally of the 2012 and the 2016 events is -4. That may not be huge
for countries like USA or China but may sound alarming for a country like India
who sent in a record number of participants only to win 2 medals. From the national record of 6 medals we are down to 2. What went
wrong? What was right? Should we remain content in just the 2 medals we won. Is
the government or the sports ministry playing the right cards at the right time
to help groom the youngsters? Are the facilities/infrastructure well developed
here? What exactly needs to happen for India to succeed in the 2nd
most watched sporting event.
We sent in 118 athletes as compared to 554
by USA who leads the chart with a whooping tally of 121 medals. The medal to participants
percentage is a mere 1.69% for India as compared to 21.84% for US. The sole
reason I’m comparing the two countries is 31.89 crores as compared to our 125.2
crores. With such a huge tally of manpower where exactly do we lack? Is it that
we do not have a knack? Is it like the fact that after all it’s a sporting
event and eventually we did not win though we tried our best? Yes, that’s true.
But was that the best we could do? No, that’s not true. We need to accept the
fact that we lacked in some departments and we need to improve!
The first and foremost
area of improvement lies in physical training sessions in schools. Many, if not
all schools, don’t have fit trainers. Some schools even have teachers who teach
other subjects take up the physical training (PT) subject just to earn a bit
more, which is at the expense of the student’s fitness as I’ve been to some
schools in South Mumbai to spy on the PT time to see the trainers (actually
teachers) just standing in a corner with the students doing some bullshit
warm up. I firmly believe that the PT in school has to be the base to groom the
youngsters for the challenges of tomorrow. The schools who give importance to
PT and sports in general have their own teams and excel too. But it’s too rare!
Rare considering the fact PT is a compulsory subject in all schools but has
lost its sheen due to the fact that it’s a graded subject and hence no student
and no teacher and no one is general is giving it importance and this is the
main reason our tally never goes into 2 digits and the total medals we have won
so far ever since 1900 is just 28 as compared to 121 won by US in 2016 alone.
Another reason is the infrastructure.
We spend a lot less on our athletes and coaches and facilities. Around one-third
to that of UK who won 67 medals. Well, just for information, UK has 1.8 crores of
people aged between 15 and 35 which is the ripe age for men and women alike to
compete. India on the other hand has 40 crores in this age group which is way
too much as compared to UK. And still yet much less is spent in a country which
recently ranked 7th in the wealthiest nation below UK which stood 4th.
Is the money required going in the right direction? I doubt as I remember the
CG scam! The other reason is the funding to sports federations is falling at an
alarming rate in India. This affects the coaching and the facilities a lot more
than we can imagine. And there is US where many athletes raise their own
funding from public which as of now let’s ignore! Let’s discuss it later. Private
funding is too hazy. While sponsorship and other contribution is open and
documented, the funding to individual athletes after that is not! Why? No
personal grudges, but don’t you think that instead of giving P.V. Sindhu crores
of rupees after the Olympics, we could have spent the same amount on her and
others before the event…
The last time we won a
gold medal in Summer Olympics was in 2008 when Abhinav Bindra bagged one which
was the first gold medal in 28 years and the 2nd gold medal in 44
years for India. I am proud of the way the athletes have come on top against
the odds but yes, I want to see them perform even better. I am personally not
content on the 2 medals we have won and want to see a change. I request you to
share the link to this article as much as you can so that at least some people
change their perspective. I would like everyone out there to share their
feedback because together we can! I can’t change this alone, and not all points are
covered too. I simply stressed on the facts that we need to imbibe the ideas
into youngsters in the early stages and that we need to spend wisely and
smartly! Lets do something to make this journey even more enjoyable. Do drop in your feedback here or on my Facebook account. Cheers!
