Whole of India was in a jubilant mood when India ended up winning a silver medal and a bronze medal. The government as usual decided to shower our winners P.V Sindhu and Saakshi Malik with loads of cash prizes and other treats. Rightfully they deserve every ounce of success they earned through their sheer determination and hard work. Sindhu had a great mentor in Gopichand who has been there done that. Sakshi’ story is clearly the case of the classic underdog. Coming from one of the lowest sex ratio states in the country, where sports is discouraged for females, she overcame all the odds to give India its first medal in the Olympics. Without a question this is one of the most inspiring stories of 2016.
And then came the bomb, Piers Morgan. Well we Indians are not good at taking criticism, are we? He only said and I quote “Country with 1.2 billion people wildly celebrates 2 losing medals. How embarrassing is that? All hells broke loose. One of the first to counter, Virendar Sehwag. He said England invented cricket and yet haven’t won in the grandest stage of them all. Seriously, how can one compare Olympics to Cricket. And for the record they did win the T-20 world which is the THING right now in cricket.
Guess what Morgan is spot on. Not to undermine our Indian contingent in any way but when we have the 2nd largest population (age between 10-40) and yet fail to achieve any major gold, it speaks volumes about our inability to produce world class talent. Rather than introspect at our failures we tend to attack the ones who dared to target our failures.
Our Hockey team has done us proud in the past, Abhinav Bindra the only individual gold medallist has done it too albeit at a huge cost (physical and financial). Not to forget the various medals we won in shooting, wrestling etc.
Countries like Azerbaijan with a GDP of $75.2 billion has more medals than India ($2.07 trillion). I believe if we start planning for the Olympics 10 years in India (It’s India of course) we can compete with the best in the world. Planning is right from building the grassroots like proper facilities for the athletes. It’s shameful that some of the athletes did not get proper facilities and some of them were a bit tired and exhausted from the travelling. Also it wouldn’t harm if we find gems in the schools and colleges. There are a million youth who have the ability but not the right resource and who yearn for that one chance.
The biggest question will be “What will be our excuse in 2020? Or will there be an excuse?
