Two-time Olympic-medalist Sushil Kumar Singh recently wrote in a column for the Hindustan Times encouraging former athletes and sportspersons to be involved in the sports system, so as to help younger sportspersons realize their potential and accomplish their goals. He also took the Shooting Federation as an example that the rest of the country must follow in order to improve our performance at the Olympics games.
Firstly, Sushil Kumar spoke about how our country lags behind the rest of the world in terms of infrastructure for sports which is one of the major reasons India has been unable to make use of the fact that we are the second most populated country in the world.
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After the Sydney Olympics in 2000, athletes in India were told that performances would be analyzed in order to make India’s campaign at the 2004 Athens Olympics, 2008 Beijing Olympics, and 2012 London Olympics a success said Sushil.
However, we are now done with the 2016 edition of the Olympic Games and a clear system still seems to be lacking, says Sushil. He congratulated the Shooting Federation who have appointed Abhinav Bindra as the head of a committee that will look into the reason why Indian shooters didn’t win a medal at the Olympic games.
He has also requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to call up the handful of medalists from the past Olympics and assign them with specific work to develop the future generation of medal winners.
In the age of technology, Sushil Kumar says that India hasn’t made full use of the technology available to us for the development of sports. He hence called for the authorities to make full use of the resources available to us.
Sushil called for the athletes to start planning for the next Olympics well in advance, as opposed to the current trend where the athletes start training only a year before the extravaganza.
“At the Olympics, people don’t know you by name. They will say he is from India. They won’t know who Sushil is. They will say he is from India. It is our responsibility to do well,” said Sushil.
He called for coaches to stay with their students in order to monitor their progress from close range stating that P.V Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth are benefiting from the fact that coach Pulella Gopichand stays with them.
India finished 67th on the medal table this year which is one of the country’s worst performances since they started participating in the Olympics as an independent nation.
