Olympics
A lot has been said and analysed in the last few days. A lot of them are valid points. I hope Olympic sports get the spotlight throughout the year, not just once in four years. I want to highlight one factor that prevents countries like India from winning medals - narrow pool of talent.
Let me illustrate by two observations:
During my school days, my focus was on playing shuttle badminton. However, during summer holidays (which used to be around 45 days), my dad would enroll me in Tennis camps, where I learned how to play the game. This would have happenned for three years. I played in clay courts and people who prepare the courts were called marker and linesman (I hope I'm remembering them). They would prepare the courts with bare hands, and will also help the coach in feeding the balls during practice. All of them come from poor background, but they played better tennis than anyone in the courts. The camp would have different sets of players, and there were few who used to play at the state level. Still, the markers/ linesman, will be able to beat them comfortably with poor shoes and diet . Did they every play any tournament? None. I am not talking of 30 or 40 year olds. These are teens and early 20s.
At school, I played only one tennis tournament where I reached the semis. At college, I was part of the team, and we reached the finals at inter-college tournament. Once, we (Vivekananda College) were supposed to play against the Loyola College, which had national and international players. Continuous rain meant we were declared joint winners. But for rains, we had zero chance of defeating the Loyola team. My team had some good players who had played for the state, but it was no match for Loyola.
After many years, me and my colleague had a meeting with a client whose office was located inside the R K Khanna Tennis Stadium. Its a modern sports facility, with floodlights and gym etc., We reached early so was watching the kids come and play at the stadium where India has played many memorable David cup matches. Even Commonwealth games were conducted.
Barring one or two players, the entire crowd of young people who came to play went back with hardly any sweat. Arrived to the court with a driver driven car, wore all the right sports gear, had costly tennis racquets but there was no zeal.
Some sports (like tennis and badminton) are expensive for many people to send their kids to play. One of my classmates at Phoenix used to be the top 3 junior player in Argentina. His friends (two of them) were among the top 10 in the world for few years in late 2000's. I played tennis with him one day and could hardly face his serve. He probably gave one game out of pity!
He was saying that they would go into a match with four racquets, and would change the racquet after two sets. And they will re-strung the four racquets for the next match. Just imagine how much money this alone will cost.
I am not saying rich kids don't work hard. But, unless the sports federations and government take steps to open up sports to a wider set of people, we will always face a talent pool crunch. We might be a country of 1.4 billion, but our pool of players is small.
Create sports facilities everywhere, encourage everyone to come and try out different sports, have people to spot talent, once identified, take them to a coaching centre and train them.