Three Indian women have made all Indians proud at the Rio Olympics,2016 .P.V.Sindhu winning silver in women's badminton,Sakshi Malik winning bronze in women's wrestling in 58 kilos categories. Dipa karmakar narrowly missed a bronze medal in gymnastics. An Indian woman coming to the fourth spot in gymnastics in an Olympic event, not so popular in India itself is a great achievement.Our medal tally so far is just two, 1 silver and 1 bronze.But the whole nation erupts in joy. I doubt whether we would surpass the medal tally of 2012 London Olympics (6).In 2012 we manged to double our medal tally from (3) won in 2008 Beijing Olympics. In the past also women like Malleswari Saina Nehwal and Mary Khon have won Olympic medals for India.Like Dipa, P.T.Usha missed a medal in 1984 Los Angles Olympics for 400 meters hurdles by just 0.01 seconds.With just one more day left for the Rio Olympics to end , there is no further medal prospects for India.
Look at the Olympic medal winners for India,apart from the above mentioned women ,men who have won olympic medals for India like Abhinav Bhindra,Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore,Vijender singh ,Leander Paes, Sushil Kumar,Gaagan Narang and Vijaykumar all of them have come to surface through their individual efforts. No government sports body in India has produced a medal winner in any sport, game or athletics. This holds good for sports celebrities of any discipline in India, be it Anand,Tendulkar,Prakash Padukone or Sania Mirza.
A country of 130 billions is not spending enough on identifying talents at an young age and give rigorous training to win medals in an event like Olympics. Leave alone identifying talents, not enough funds are allocated to sports bodies and SAI. Even the 2016 budget has given a marginal increase of 50 crores over previous allocation for sports and the present 2016 budget is 1592 crores.On the contrary all our politicians want to head all sports bodies in the country.They do all the dirty tricks to remain at the helm of all sports bodies.
Look at Usain bolt .It is a rare feat for him to have won medals consecutively in last three Olympics. This means he remained the champ for 12 years, an unimaginable feat and he kept on improving his own records.
The performance of Britain in this Olympics is really surprising.It has managed to push China down and get in to the second spot in total medals tally. How did they achieve this feat? .They increased the total funding for sports They also followed a simple formula.They identified the podium potential sportsperson and trained them rigorously and concentrated on them.
India could also do this.There are natural talents for every sport in India. But the huge task lies in identifying them,catching them young,giving them international exposure through coaching,competitions and work focused with only one target of winning a medal for the country.
We as a nation should also identify sports persons who can participate in multiple events and win more medals, like Michael Phelps.He participated in 7 events and won 5 medals. India can also learn one or two tips from our past experience at Olympics and encourage more women participants in Olympic events. Women can win medals more easily than their male counterparts. With better training preparation and commitment from sports bodies women Olympic contenders in Wrestling,Archery and Shooting could have increased our medal's tally.
Above all we need a political commitment and will to make Indian sports proud. Let us hope there is a paradigm shift in our sports policies in the years to come.
India could also do this.There are natural talents for every sport in India. But the huge task lies in identifying them,catching them young,giving them international exposure through coaching,competitions and work focused with only one target of winning a medal for the country.
We as a nation should also identify sports persons who can participate in multiple events and win more medals, like Michael Phelps.He participated in 7 events and won 5 medals. India can also learn one or two tips from our past experience at Olympics and encourage more women participants in Olympic events. Women can win medals more easily than their male counterparts. With better training preparation and commitment from sports bodies women Olympic contenders in Wrestling,Archery and Shooting could have increased our medal's tally.
Above all we need a political commitment and will to make Indian sports proud. Let us hope there is a paradigm shift in our sports policies in the years to come.
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