Sunday, August 17, 2008

We struck gold, what next? Can we build Indian sports?

We struck gold, what next? Can we build Indian sports?

It’s a historic moment in the history of Indian sports. First ever individual sport gold medal in the Olympics! Abhinav Bindra has made us all of proud. United States has an450 men old Olympic team while the Indian contingent is just about 59! We might not have quality sportsmen to qualify for the big event but the hope of 1.1 Billion Indians is revived by this feet.

Some cynics remark that every 30 years India gets a gold in Olympics so the next will be due in 30 years. Do you think so? Can we do something to change the dire state of Athletics and Sports in general in India? Can we get the nation to think something more than Cricket? Of course all of the nation wants to think something other than Cricket but they need a pillar they need a hero to hold on to. Abhinav might be just it -? We the NRIs (right ? - I'm one now) give quite a bit back to the nation in terms of supporting education, aid during natural disasters etc. But how about if we have a Hope fund for Indian sports! Especially the individual sports? The idea is that this fund trains may 5-10 Indian sports stars from early on - gets them the appropriate coaching from abroad and nourishes their dreams and ambitions. We need more Bindra's to make our believe in themselves and something must be done about it - more on a consistent, quality driven and citizen fueled approach.

A common result of such success it media hype and melodrama. We often have seen that we the desis fall so much to emotions and just get over-whelmed by feelings. The next steps , action and what we ought to do is usually missing! And thus our circles of misery and overjoy continues :). So what could be the next step to promote more athletics in India. Among the NRIs and at least in North America is very popular to try endurance sports like Marathon, Cycling etx. Usually these events are coupled with fund-raising - so how if we associate these events with the cause of moving the state of India sports one notch up. Concrete how if on the Marathon event we invite one of the athletes from India to participate. Usually a fund raising marathon team is about 40-60 people. So if everyone contributes $75-100 we have enough to sponsor an Indian athlete to participate in the event!!! What do you think of the idea?

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