Tuesday, August 12, 2008

A medal for a country of 1 Billion.

Abhinav Bindra...You did us proud. A country of 1billion now has 1 gold medalist, a new poster boy who for a change doesn’t play cricket. A gold medal that was long deserving for a country. During childhood, a naive me always used to look through the medal standings and used to be disappointed seeing that my country was never in the list. Just like your dreams and your parent’s dreams, you have fulfilled a generation's dream for sure.

A dissection for the victory would clearly show the lack of support from the local authorities .if it wasn’t for a rich father and a talented coach it is highly unlikely that we would all have seen an Indian Flag be raised high above the others at Beijing. The victory of one Mr. Abhinav Bhindra must prove as an eye opener to the various authorities to promote and recognize genuine talent. Up here in a foreign land, you find no words to argue when any of your colleagues chide on why Winning an Olympic medal took India so Long. Blaming cricket for the gloom and doom of all other sports in India serves no purpose, baseball is popular in the States, Basketball is, American Football is, yet still they excel in the Olympics. The infrastructure in India is something that needs to be worked on. In Trivandrum they used to have a Sports School namely GV RAJA SPORTS school, which was expected to nurture the finest sports talents around Kerala.But whenever it came to school level tourneys most often than not i used to find some other school team bagging the cup.Kerala has produced some fine Asian and national level atheletes,but most often than not they have found the International gap a big too wide to bridge. Indian authorities must take this as a wake-up call rather than run around to take credit for this Olympic gold. As Abhinav Bindra quite bluntly put across, This is a victory for his Family, and then his country”. His dad had the money as well as the faith to support his son. Not to mention that the son was dedicated talented and hardworking ,else if money would have been the easy route to success we would have had Mukesh Ambani Lifting 176Kg in men 62Kg weightlifting and Anil Ambani pippin phelps in 100m..What if ABhinav was born in a poor man's hut, would he have received an iota of support. So a lot of these things need to be taken into consideration. Cricket’s popularity is on a slide. Soon 50 over cricket and test cricket would lose its charm amongst the masses, IF not Now then When. India used to be a powerhouse in hockey, but the current plight of Indian hockey is heartbreaking to say the least. The authorities have to shoulder a lot of blame for the downfall of Indian Hockey. The Jimmy George Era in Indian Volleyball when India was third in the Asian games, Jimmy George was playing for Italian Volleyball Clubs sounds like a fairy story .The less said about Indian Football the better.

While we take in the gold euphoria let us not forget PT USHA, MILKA SINGH and the likes who had missed out on Olympic medals fighting against well trained, professional athletes. My heart goes out to them who didn't have an Apjit Bindra backing their abilities. Hope no more PT USHa's and Milka Singhs would miss out on medals due to being ill equipped and pray that 2012 turns out to be an even better Olympics for India

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good words.