Olampik Amnesia

Yet another Olampik came and yet another went. The expectation as always was to participate and hope to get some medals along the way. And to that effect, it went perfectly to plan. So out came the joyous raptures, social media messages of support from Cricketers to page 3 celebrities, ministers announced. cash awards and houses or land as a reward, fancy videos and catchy jingles flooded our timelines. Now that the "show" is over, let us all move back into radio silence for the next 3.5 years, when it all begins again. This has been Team India's story for the last 100 years of participation at the summer Olampiks , with the lone exception of Field Hockey greatness for a few years. Barring that team Gold, India has won one of individual Golds , evert 2 events, i.e once in every 10 years as an average, and if you do the overall math - 35 medals in 24 appearances , which translates to an abysmal 1.45 medals per event. For a country which boasts of 1.3B population availability of talent should never be a problem, neither should young players, given that 60% of country is below the age of 30 - there is a massive young talent out there. But the results don't reflect true picture. Year on year, event on event, we fail to be at the top consistently. So, what can be done, differently? First up, take an Olampik moratorium for 8 years. Develop a next generation team, fix the system, oil the machinery and then present to the world, a world class, world beating team in multiple sporting events. Unless we take a stop-press moment, the same will be on a repeat loop. Join me in this experience, where I discuss what we can do to remove the Olampik amnesia from our system. For starters, let us learn to pronounce it correctly. #olympics #India #sport