Indian Olympics

Posted by: ragatheblogger on: June 14, 2009

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India is a country which is notoriously famous for the second largest populous country in the world. Despite this, we put up a very dismal performance in the Olympics. There was a small respite last Olympics where we managed to bag a gold medal. But this is no reason to celebrate when a poor country like Jamaica with their small population can bag two medals, and a populous country of China gets 51, why not us? This is something we should take a serious note of. There are many reasons attributed to the meager medal tally, with the only solace of the individual gold in the previous Olympics by Abhinav Bhindra. He does deserve a pat on his back for bringing a gold to India. With the aesthetic way our Indian Olympic Association works, we would have missed this gold too hadn’t he had enough resources with him to travel to Athens. He was having his training in Sweden ( I believe) and he wanted the IOA to sponsor his trip to Athens. True to its being as the government agency, the IOA asked him to come all the way to India and hit Athens, else he had  to pay on his own if he had to go direct. Truly shocked, he decided to go on his own as it was cheaper travel to Athens than to New Delhi! Thank god that he had the money to fund himself, else India would have said good bye to the gold.

Some of the reasons I feel India still lags..

1. Little or no facilities for sports and training in almost whole of the rural areas and in some urban areas. Comparing to China where talents are groomed once found, this happens once in a blue moon in India.

2. Access to modern facilities is of a major concern. Government doesn’t provide good facilities to the public. It is only available for a lucky few who have somehow managed to get into the top echleon. Also, the middle class and the rural public simply cannot afford the fees for the private training.

3. Genetics is not much of a concern. It may, but I feel this is just a lame excuse.

India being a large country, the government alone cannot reach out to all the places of human habitation to find out talents. NGOs must also devise strategies and conduct camps. If they find someone, the must take the onus of finding a sponsor to train him/her. We on our part should contribute monetarily or/and provide logistics. We have no right to blame someone else unless  we have undertaken the burden of reaching out to the less fortunate ones. The private public venture will help us to obtain satisfactory results, and more golds in the coming Olympics and other athletic means.

Lets do our part! Jai Hind!