Can India go one better at the Olympics?

India and China are relatively similar in many ways. Be it population density, a conservative culture or prevailing economic conditions and they also share many problems too. When we view the ongoing London Olympics in this backdrop, we often wonder as to what are the factors that distinguish the performances of these two nations in the field of athletics or sport in general.

China won its first ever gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, South Korea, they finished 11th in the medal standings. However, its athletes rapidly improved, finishing 4th at the 1992 Summer Olympics at Barcelona, Spain. In subsequent Summer Olympics, China has always finished at 4th or higher, culminating in the first rank in the  2008 Summer Olympics, which it hosted at Beijing.

India on the other hand have never finished at a position better than the 17th rank ( pre- independence) and 22nd rank ( post- independence) at the Olympics. We have a disappointing tally of just 9 gold medals over a period of 112 years, since the first gold medal in 1900. Yes, our country has gone through testing times during those years, but somewhere down the road we wonder if we could have done better. Is there something that we can pick  from nations like China? The Chinese have always been known for their discipline and systematic planning. Of course, they do have their own share of criticism for “producing robots than athletes” in the international media circles.

But maybe there is something that India could draw from their sports culture. Of course, we do not need to produce “ROBOTS”  to win us a huge tally of medals, but we definitely need to promote fitness, sports and discipline in our country. With the ever increasing emphasis on academics and strong neglect for sports, our young population is gradually declining in health and fitness. The medals tally  may not be the perfect indicator of a nation’s health and fitness, but the participation and competitiveness  can surely be taken as a prime indicator.

Lets hope that the government takes more initiatives to promote sports and fitness in our population. India has always had good systems in place, rich sources for funding and quality man-power, but the lack of effective execution of plans and programmes have resulted in poor performance at the international level. The lack of proper execution may be due to corruption, politics and lethargy that we find in the general population of our country. However, with an encouraging performance at the ongoing London Olympics, its high time that this nation ( more than half the population accounts for the youth ) wakes up to this opportunity and ensures a better ranking at least in the next Olympic games. It will surely have an influence on our nation emerging as one of the super-powers in the near future.