Dig Deep, Strike Gold
By Paritosh Pramanik
11-9-2016
Two medals at Rio Olympics last month gave Indians much to cheer about. India was ‘saved by the girl child’ from the horror of returning empty handed as it finally managed to sneak into medals tally, thanks to the silver and bronze medals won by shuttler PV Sindhu and wrestler Sakshi Malik, respectively.
Rewards, in cash as well as in kind, were showered upon the two girls who won India accolades with their sheer grit and determination.
Everywhere, be it on news channels, in newspapers or on social media, Indians showered praises on Sakshi and Sindhu.
As the country was celebrating, another news flashed in newspapers a couple of days later.
A report by New World Wealth ranked India 7th among top 10 wealthiest countries in the world with a total individual wealth of USD 5,600 billion. The United States topped the chart. India, one of the fastest growing nations in the world, has pushed behind countries like Canada, Australia and Italy who were placed 8th, 9th and 10th in the list.
It gives a sense of pride when our nation gets acclaimed, be it on the sports field or in general.
But, at the same time, it forces one to ponder upon as to why our sportspersons continuously fail at the big stages like Olympics and World Championships despite figuring among the wealthy nations.
India manages to win a bagful of medals at Continental Championships or at the Commonwealth Games, where other countries’ participation is limited.
However, when it comes to Olympics, the biggest sporting extravaganza, the country with a population of over 130 crore, falls flat. The medal count drops down to a single digit.
India is among the top ten richest countries in the world but not even in the top 50 in sporting excellence as it finished as low as at 67th spot at Rio.
Every four years, immediately after Olympics, post mortem on India’s debacle is done by one and all. Every single Indian tries to proclaim himself/herself as the best preacher or policy maker. Everybody declares that government should change policy, give training to players abroad, provide best infrastructure, et al.
And the ministry, too, forms a committee or two ‘to look’ into the matter.
This year, too, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formed a Task Force to search the reasons behind such a pathetic show from the Indian contingent and prepare a roadmap for future.
For ages, sportspersons, coaches and authorities are talking about grooming at the grassroot level.
But till date, hardly anything concrete has been done in this regard. The Sports Ministry is definitely providing best infrastructure but to a ‘developed’ player and not at the grass root level.
The point is why not provide the best facilities to the players at the nascent stage?
The Department of Youth Affairs and Sports conducts school, college, district, division and state-level tournaments religiously. But has anybody seen the quality of those tournaments at the district level or the field on which these tournaments take place?
Events are conducted in a hurry. A football match between two schools lasts for hardly 50 minutes. And if it is a one-sided one, then it finishes as per referee’s discretion.
It is very easy to participate in debates and preach from the cosy air-conditioned rooms but it takes a whale of effort to perform the actual task.
The point is when one talks about promoting sports at grassroot level then it should actually be promoted at that level. Why not provide the best facilities at school and taluka levels itself? Like superpower the United States provide to its bidding sportspersons.
There are over 1000 tennis courts in the United States which are open for the youngest of kids or budding players who wish to learn the tricks of trade.
They get the feel of the court right from the beginning.
That’s the reason why US has proudly produced champions like Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras to name a few.
In The Netherlands, a much smaller country than India, there are over 500 astro turfs for field hockey. In India, they can be counted on fingers.
Speaking about hockey at grassroots in India, the budding players learn their dribbling skills on mud or ‘chat’ field. In most of the states, the local and school-level tournaments are played either on ‘chat ground’ or on grass turf. Whereas in Holland or Germany, kids are ‘thrown’ on astro turfs from the day they start learning how to hold a hockey stick.
These basic facilities have to be made available to the kids when they start playing the game.
Same approach has to be applied in other sports too.
Why not make it mandatory for every school in the country to have tennis courts, astro turfs, synthetic tracks, swimming pools. Not only in metros but at taluka level, too, from where India gets most of the medal winners.
Provide the best infrastructures to kids at taluka level, in every district and the result will be seen in next 10 years.
If India wants Olympic medal winners for 2024 Olympics they have to be groomed at the right earnest.
Look at China, that won 70 medals including 26 gold at Rio.
In China, a child is ‘adopted’ by the sports bodies or families introduce their wards to sports as early as four years of age. Then only they manage to produce a champion at the tender age of 15 years. At Rio, fifteen-year-old Chinese Ren Qian won the 10-metre platform gold medal in swimming becoming the youngest champion from that country.
A champion is not made in a fortnight. It takes years and years of hard work to carve out a medal winner.
India is participating in Olympics since 1928 and China started its sojourn four years later (1932). They did not participate in the Games from 1956 to 1980 but returned at the 1984 Los Angeles Games with a bang winning a total of 32 medals out of which 15 were gold medals. Since then, its success graph has only soared at every Games.
Since 1992 Barcelona Olympics their medals tally never came below 50 medals.
In comparison to that, India’s medals can be counted on fingers. Their best was at 2012 London where it bagged six medals (three silver and three bronze. Yogeshwar Dutt’s bronze was upgraded to silver recently).
Those six medals prompted the so-called pundits of the game to predict that India would win atleast 8-9 medals at Rio. But their predications went horribly wrong as the athletes were buried under the heavy pressure of expectations.
Shockingly, India returned with just two medals.
Not that the shooters, and other athletes performed badly.
There were some very close defeats. Shooters Jitu Rai and Abhinav Bindra missed the target by whisker while gymnast Dipa Karmakar filled the countrymen heart with pride before being pipped by eventual gold medal winner from US Simone Biles. Tennis players Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna, too, were on the cusp of winning a third spot but missed it narrowly.
But overall, the expectation from a contingent of 118 athletes, was only to win medals in single digit which they still failed to achieve.
In India’s comparison, Thailand had 56 athletes at Rio and six returned with medals. A really good show, it could be said. They participated in less number of sports and concentrated on them rather than marking their attendance in as many as they can.
India, too, can ponder upon on concentrating on few sports and develop players in those games.
Badminton, tennis, wrestling, archery, shooting, hockey have won medals for India in pervious games.
Why not concentrate on these sports from the grassroot level for next 10-15 years.
Pullela Gopichand worked for over a decade in his academy to give India two medal winners.
Government can also think on ‘privatising’ these few sports by handing them totally to private firms. Olympic Gold Quest, JSW and a few others are already pouring in money to prepare champions. And the results are there for everybody to see.
Such firms should be handed a few sports and the results would definitely see an upward journey in 2024 Games.
