"Olympics", is ON, an event of the highest quality, where sports(wo)men compete, prove and win medals. India too participated, yes, "participated". We made the world realize that we are good at numbers, Indians turned in great numbers in filling up the empty seats and filling up those unclaimed last few points, last few positions in most of the competitions. Don't we deserve a gold for this, something that even china couldn't do, a bigger country in terms of size and number, may be even in terms of "politics". They still managed to come second in medals tally.
I happened to watch "We The People" in NDTV 24x7 this Sunday, good show, "business", where Indians are good at, "talking", as I am doing right now :). The subject was "Olympics and India's performance"..."Is Rathore the only silver lining?. There was a person from the "Sports Authority of India" trying to defend whatever happened, from poor performance to poor character from the contestants/coaches with regards to doping issues. Poor guy, he was so keen on covering up things and trying to put forward a rosy rosy picture, it was so obvious. When Barka asked for a Yes/No answer, he started off saying "let me explain..." ha ha, it was a real fun to watch. Yes it was so funny, the hand picked 80 odd legends, as they were portrayed in the media before the start of the games, failed to deliver. All sorts of issues were discussed from funding to managing to ability none seemed to me to be the core problem. Though they could be that salt on the wound, but the reason behind the wound could be something else...
Indians, do they lack the passion, to win, to deliver?.. Do the atheletes have a vision?... Let us try to analyze few things
How do we identify talent?
Probably this where we are making the first mistake. We search, pick and find people who want to take sports. But unfortunately these guys happen to take sports, just because they were not fit for anything else, and they could get a job if they are good at sports. Isn't that a big problem? Personally, I have come across people who take up a way of life because that could help them LIVE...I don't blame them, they are sometimes, rather most of the times, true to what they are doing, but just being true is not enough. You should have a passion, a fire within to catapult you to the next plane, that is important.
In India, people don't find what they are good at, rather they find out where they can go up the ladder soon, and try to get trained in that stream and move on. Results, we lack that bare minimum competancy. Fortunatly for us, we found a guy, Rathore, who passioned for gun, being in army, represented india and won us the lone silver medal, the best ever display in recent olympics by India, ONE SILVER MEDAL.
Lets take the case of USA, they seem to top the medal tallies in most of the competitions, Why?, I believe that, the guys find out what they are good at, they look at their physique, stamina and choose a sport that they can excel. Everyone from their basketball team is above 6ft and got a good physique, talk about 100m dash, boy, just by looking at the guy you will say, yes he will make it.
Solution : What is required, is a process to identify people who have passion and capability to excel, perform and give 200% to the sport.
How do we coach/train?
Once the sports(wo)men are identified, they fall into two categories
- The "Have's" - Those who have the money/sponsorship and influence to remain seeded no matter what their performance is
- The "Have not's"-Those unfortunate souls who just get to "flicker", capture the limelight and loose ground due of lack of the same, money/sponsorship and influence
Now once we get to a stable state to train people, we are just left with the "Have's", who happen to be really really difficult to train. The same grouping is applicable to coachs as well. People end up having a coach who wouldn't even have represented his/her state.
if we have good coach and a good talented sports(wo)men, next issue creeps up...
Solution : your comments here...:D
Where do we train?
We have big/small and beautiful stadiums, training centers, but unfortunately they happend to serve more as a landmark for reaching a friend's place or a bus terminus. Few to None are being used for the purpose they were built. Take for instance, the hockey stadium, players are refusing to play due the bad state of the turf, same case with the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, where the football ground has become the breeding place for frogs and reptiles. These are just instances, may be if I sit and think, there could be lots more to quote...but I will stop this list...hopefully point conveyed...
Reasons...could be lack of funds to lack of "intention" on the part of federations/officials. You will not be able to get a single person to answer the three letter question, "WHY?". You will end up getting a 1 hr cover up speech, if you dig further, you will unearth a few cases in court, probably few commissions looking into it.
Solution : Catch the next flight and fly out, get trained elsewhere. You just have to worry about only one thing, money. That's what most of the promising professionals like Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, yeah even Rathore happened to do. Perhaps, the only sport that we can provide a field to practice is for Vishwanathan Anand, a chess board, something that we could provide ;), even there we don't have the privilege of providing Big Blue machines for advanced practice and training.
Conclusion
If we end up implementing corrective measures, we could see lots of youngsters taking up professional sporting and will have more people, who could be blogging now.., to go out, play, represent and win medals for our country.
