Hope for success of India in the next Olympics

The Olympic Games are held once in every four years, providing a platform for athletes, from over 200 countries, to showcase their talent to the world.

The quadrennial event, with a logo of five rings, is a test of one the five traits of an individual – brawn, bravodo, pace, finesse and precision. The event provides a ground for both men and women irrespective of gender inequality. It honours the skilled athletes with 3 medals – gold, silver and bronze.

India’s run so far

India’s run in the Olympics so far has been below satisfactory, with the 7th largest country in the world bagging only 26 medals so far in all the Olympic Games. To further substantiate how dissatisfactory the performance of India is, consider this – United States won 104 medals in the 2012 London Olympics, which is 4 times the total medal count of India in all Olympic Games.

United States, China, Russia and a few more countries have been very successful on the Olympics stage, with India facing back-to-back failures. What could be the reason for this? Why was India unable to compete with other countries on the Olympics front, as it did on the economic front?

Issues are many, but the reasons are very few.

Reasons and remedies

The reasons for the country’s poor show on the grand stage are interlinked. The factors responsible for this bear a proportion with one another. Some plausible one-on-one factors can be stated as:

Success and spending

The allocation of funds to the development of Infrastructure and provision of institutional support to the athletes is directly related to the success of the athletes.

Figures apart, the budget allocations of China on sports is atleast 5 times that of India, and so are the results, in terms of the medal count. More the allocations, more the expectations and chances of the country, to succeed in the medal hunt.

Higher the expenditure and effective utilization of resources on sports will result in higher chances of success.

Encouragement and enthusiasm

One major impediment for the failure of the country to produce quality talent is the lack of encouragement, rather discouragement rendered at all levels- school, college and house. Parents want good grades, but they don’t realize that, performance in sports does not affect their studies. This delusional attitude of the parents, makes enthusiastic children to remiss their sporting flavour!

We tend to invest in what we feel is important – youth talent should be encouraged to cultivate their sporting interests.

Higher the level of encouragement rendered will result in higher chances of producing quality talent.

Athlete’s acclaim and amoral practices

Amoral practices and Iillegal procedures (corruption, biased selection) are the biggest stumbling blocks in a country that has been attacked by democratic fever. The amoral practices, stand between talent and performance. If and only if the allotted funds reach the athlete, down the line, there is a chance of excellence.

Lower the occurrence of amoral practices will result in higher chances for the athlete to receive international acclaim.

Ray of hope

With the success of Abhinav Bindra, Yogeswar Dutt, Sushil Kumar, Babita Kumari and many more Indian athletes who put up a grand show in the London Olympics 2012 and Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, expectations are rife that the Indian team, in the next Olympics would bag more medals than before.

Good days ahead

It is not too late to wake up. With a change in the government at the centre, the daunting evil memories of sports scams will be forgotten. The government’s anti-corruption mantra could yield better results.

There is a hope for the Indians to assume the country’s young girls winning gold medals and the juvenile boys becoming Bindras.

With the Asian Games in progress and Indians, having opened their medal count, and a two-year preparation time for Olympics still at hand, rampant changes in the preparation pattern would atleast increase the medal count.