Olympics 2008 - A revelation to India

And suddenly, everyone's excited about India's performance in Olympics. Most of the papers are blaring victory horns over India's medal winning performances. They definitely should - it is indeed laudable that Indian's have had a historical performance at Beijing - 3 medals and counting.. But most of us fail to notice the pattern that spreads large around the medals that were won. I might be even taken to be a pessimist, but I couldn't help observing that except for the pugilists, none of the other medals were won by planned effort. Amongst the entire lot who went to Beijing, only the pugilists managed to put up a good show as a team. And perhaps it is for the same reason that Vijendar's effort seems to be of lesser magnitude than the rest - that he perform well was almost taken for granted. I could see in our boxers what I saw in Federer, doing extremely well was casual and winning a mere consequence. The confidence which comes with quality practice (thanks to Bhiwani boxing nursery - a dedicated boxing school) shone brightly in them.

Take nothing away from Bindra - he was brilliant, but the results could have easily gone either way as he himself stated. Oh yes! even the shooters had to go to Italy for quality practice. Sushil's success was purely individualistic talent and the brave man's fortune for he couldn't even manage to get support for his diet from the authorities. While everybody's mesmerized with our performance in Beijing, it is time for the Authorities to stand up and deliver - they better take good care of the athletes. That would be the only way to ensure that a billion strong nation doesn't need to be rapacious over a solitary medal.

Most of us wonder what it is that we lack - 'facilities' which most of us would agree upon. I had chanced to read in a recent article which says that the lack of communication and reachability is the culprit. It says that the athletes go unnoticed as they are not able to communicate and commute to the locations which would facilitate honing their skills. They are not able to project themselves and their abilities to the right channel. Antagonists would say thus "Talent can hardly go unnoticed". But doesn't this seem logically improbable? A country with half our population are able to produce talents of such variety - Are we genetically decrepit that we don't possess physical talents? No way! the issue is not with the lack of talents for sure, but with exposure and channelization of resources - as our pugilists have demonstrated: practice and the right kind of facilities were the key.

I'm excited, not because we won three medals, but because we have exposed to ourselves, the sure-shot way to excellence. For me, the proudest moment was not when the athletes stood on the podium kissing their medals, but when the coach of a boxing nation like Cuba stood up watching and said when we were going for weigh-in before the match "you are going to win".