A nation of 140 crore people keeps praying for every single win, forget about the medals, that remain elusive most of the times. While many other top countries at par with us, celebrate Gold and Silver, we take solace saying “we tried our best” even in 4th/5th place finish. Losing in pre-quarterfinals and quarterfinals with a message that “we are unlucky to lose”. has become a common phenomenon now. And, a Bronze medals brings tears of happiness to our eyes.
Yes, our medal drought in Olympics continues unabated and we keep starving for every single medal, irrespective of its colour. In our Olympics history of 124 years, we have won only 41 medals – 10 Gold, 10 Silver and 21 Bronze. 13 out of 41 came from Hockey only. When it comes to the yellow metal, 8 out of 10 Golds were from Hockey while Abhinav Bindra and Neeraj Chopra were the only players to win individual gold medal at the Olympics. In most of the events, we reach the semifinals or finals for the first time! And, that’s considered as a big achievement for us.
Support Independent Journalism? Keep us live.
We have enough sports talents in the country. But, they are unable to perform at the global stage like Olympics. Can we just blame the players? Probably not! Our Sports system is flawed. We have failed to groom top-notch Olympics-level players barring a few exceptions. Neither sportspersons nor the sports officials (forget about the sports administration), are accountable for their poor or below par performances. If there is a reward for good performance, then tough questions should be asked when things go wrong.
Unless we fix accountability, we can’t expect world class performance and medals at such high-profile sporting events. PM Modi speaks of dream of India to host 2036 Olympics. But, are we prepared? We should host the event as a ‘Global Sporting Power’, not as a ‘Medal Starving Nation’.
Comments are closed.