E VEN as winning medals in international sports competitions has almost become a matter of science -- in the sense a lot of scientifically curated efforts are required to produce champions out of bright individuals, the need is felt in India efforts to create a basic talent pool mostly through schools and subsequently colleges.Though schools and colleges do have their sporting activities, very rarely do we come across very focused efforts to carve out champions in a true sense from the bunch of boys and girls interested in sports.Very rarely do we also come across celebrations of sporting talent in schools and colleges as well as families. And this is the point where the concept of a genuine sporting culture gets defiled. For, when a society does not celebrate its sporting talent at whatever level, it cannot be expected to produce world class sportspersons in any disciplines.

 

That is the actual national concern -- which very rarely does the larger society realise. And that is the reason that a nation as large and great as India in every which the way is able to bring back only a handful of medals from competitions such as Olympics. There, of course, are talented sportspersons who get reasonable support from their individual eco-systems. But, as the larger society, there is only an occasional celebration of genuine sporting talent. Such talented young persons do make name for themselves, all right, and bring back some medals -- and some glory. But their number is yet so small that the nation hardly has much to write home about on the subject. Media does offer decent coverage to the shining performances in sports. Yet, that coverage comes more as a matter of routine rather than exuberant celebrations. There is certain smugness about the whole thing -- so much so that there are not many to feel happy about the good showing except the person and his or her close associates. For others, that is simply ‘news’ -- may be good news ! This does not speak of what is understood as sporting culture. Such a smug societal approach does not encourage championship effort.

 

Thus, as a the celebrated hockey legend Gurbux Singh once observed, a champion does not require only muscles, but a mind that is all the time charged, all the time inspired to perform at the peak. This is a huge spiritual input that our larger society fails severely to offer. Gurbux Singh was responding to a young girl’s question about what made him the hockey legend that he was. He said, in effect, the entire journey was rather lonely and there was support only from a small band of people who doted on him while the larger society slept. That is no good a condition, so to speak. If India expects its sportspersons to bring big hauls of medals from every tournament, then a conscious effort will have to be made to build a fine sporting culture in the society on a continuous basis. And the trouble is that the common people of India feel nearly fully unconcerned about this critical issue.

 

What is needed to be done, therefore, is to stop hollow hyping of some medals, and a serious approach to promoting sports as a matter of national culture -- even religion, so to say ! Countries like the United States or Russia or China or Japan or Canada or the United Kingdom bring in loads of medals from international sporting events because they have the backing of the whole society and a whole systematic industry-like arrangement to train sporting talent in different disciplines. Or in other words, it may be said easily that in such countries, talented persons are picked up when they are around 3-4 years of age and then introduced to rigorous regimes of muscle-building and mind-training -- for years. Generally, when a Chinese or an American athlete enters an Olympic arena at say around 18 years of age, he or she has already put in about 15 years of preparations. In India, too, some sparkling performers in sports undergo such regimes -- but in much lesser numbers and in a very marginally institutionalised manner.That is where the actual difference is made. And this happens because the larger Indian society is yet to create within its folds a sporting culture in which sports are considered a matter of religion. Is this expecting too much from the society ? Not at all. Much to the contrary, this is a basic requirement. Medals or no medals, what matters most is to introduce sports as an integral part of the educational activity. If the child turns to competitive sports, well and welcome. Even otherwise, initiation into good quality sports training in early stages prepares a child for a better life by any definition. The question is: Are we ready? (To be continued)