No olympics medals for you (India)

 Every year when we had sports day at school, I would sit glumly and watch, as other kids won prizes in various events. I have that same feeling now, as an Indian, when I watch all the other countries get many medals while we celebrate our 3-5 medals with such gusto as to make those other country athletes think they are missing something. We blame our genes, lack of sports facilities, schools without play grounds, over emphasis on academics, politics in sport, weather, diet, money and parental pressure among other things. In short, there is a lot of blame to go around. 

It is perplexing right, we have the second highest population, we have a diversity that feels like Europe, we are the 6th, sorry 5th largest economy. There is money, there is political will, industry support and societal acceptance. All this put together should at least get us 20-30 medals right, but India still languishes in those single digits.

No one thing can vault India to the upper echelons of the medal table, but here is one thing nobody is talking about and that is something I believe is extremely important. The grass roots system.

Every school and college should henceforth have a sports day (if you do not have a ground, beg borrow or steal (more likely) one). There should be events for every age group. More important, each and every result should be uploaded to a central database with the winning timings so as to create athletic stats for all the possible athletes in the country. Once we know a certain kid is exceptional, not just compared to their present peers and past peers but also international level, they should be conscripted into a sports academy taken away from their parents and trained 365-24/7 until they burn out or bring home a medal (kidding kidding, we are not a China or Russia). 

Once the talented kids are identified, they should be given all round support to train and realise their potential. Support entails access to training, better nutrition, some allowances in school work to allow for the time they spend training, scholarships, reservations in higher education etc. They should be able to continue their sport journey without jeopardising their normal life.

My hypothesis is that we are missing out on real talent, we have athletes who sacrifice and work hard, but are they really the ones who should be? you cannot teach raw speed, height or talent. Unearthing those hidden gems and polishing them is our path to 20-30 medals. We need to widen our pool of athletes. There are, rather I wish to believe, there are kids in our villages, slums and forests who have the natural ability to be athletes but no avenue for the same, everyone in the village might see a kid run fast, but how fast, nobody really knows and this will bring that out.

The next step would be to have proper sport meets for different age groups at different levels, city, state and national. There might already be some, but they need to be formalised and they should get all the athletes identified participating to identify who among them can be further encouraged to train and participate at the international level.

Remember, there is no shame in figuring out that one is only good enough for the national / state or city level, the idea is to participate and achieve ones potential, what ever that might be. One should be able to fall back to the normal academic/vocational track and take the learnings from sport onto life. Thats for another post, for now lets get those kids running jumping, playing and competing. Lets find those naturally gifted athletes.