Indian Olympian Abhinav Bindra has reached out to popular journalist and NDTV’s Co-founder, Prannoy Roy, on Twitter, telling the journalist that if they do care about the Indian Olympic sport, then why they do not include any Indian Olympians on their daily sports show on the channel.
Bindra’s tweet came after a popular news channel held a major debate on Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) report on the failure of the Indian contingent at the Rio Olympics. The only Indian to win an individual gold medal at the Olympic Games had tweeted:
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The debate took place on the back of SAI’s report on the poor showing of the Indian contingent at the Rio Olympics where the nation could only manage to win two medals – PV Sindhu won silver and Sakshi Malik bagged the bronze medal.
The report, which was prepared by the Director General of SAI, Injeti Srinivas, had blamed the athletes and coaches for the nation’s performance at the Games. Srinivas had mentioned that “some athletes showed physical fitness issues, which is a matter of concern and reflects on inadequate monitoring.” SAI’s representative also said that some athletes had “performed below par in terms of personal best, which again is a matter of concern.”
Srinivas had stated, “The lacklustre performance of the Indian contingent certainly requires deep introspection and remedial measures. While we do need to make some changes, but they necessarily require to be very radical changes.”
“Performance of coaches, especially foreign coaches, needs to be evaluated very minutely. Hiring of foreign coaches should be done very carefully and based on strong and proven track record,” the report mentioned.
However, there was no mention of any changes at the administrative level which comes as a surprise to many. There have been reports in the past about the poor infrastructure facilities provided to the athletes in various SAI camps and training centres, but the report failed to mention any of these factors in its report. SAI is being criticised for its failure to make changes at the administrative level which is the main reason why Olympic sport is not developing in the nation.
On the other hand, Bindra chose to send a message to the TV journalist, mentioning that if they were so concerned about the condition of the Indian Olympic sport, then why is it that the media fails to focus on the nation’s Olympians even for 5 minutes on their respective daily sports’ shows. These shows only focus on the happenings in cricket and when another popular channel chose to hold a debate on the report on the Rio Olympics, Bindra took to Twitter.
In a series of tweets, the shooter also talked about how the news channel had a representative of a sporting organisation which is not a part of the Olympic discipline.
Bindra is someone who likes to stand up for all his fellow sportspersons and him coming out to speak up about how the TV journalists talk about the Olympic sport is a step in the right direction because these are the same journalists who do not talk about Olympic sports every day and are only willing to cover them once in four years.
