As India aspires to host the Olympic Games and goes on overdrive with its infrastructure development, it must also have a close look at the sports fitness and training situation of its athletes, given a respectable medal tally as hosts are a bare minimum requirement. In professional international sports, which the Olympics now represent (no longer for amateurs as it used to be), it is imperative that athletes are at prime fitness levels, in order to perform at their best. Basic one would say.
But it is here that India faces its greatest challenge. While those like access, exposure, infra, money and social security through jobs and endorsements have been overcome to a great extent over the past decade and a half, what has slipped through the cracks has been world class fitness and training to the most eligible.
Here it is pertinent to note that those like superstar Neeraj Chopra have spent a majority of their time since their youth days training abroad and with top proven foreign coaches. Thank God for it. So did Abhinav Bindra in a sport where the mental side needs to be developed more than the physical.
The likes of Neeraj and P.V. Sindhu who have joined the league of global elite sportsmen and women, were also blessed with naturally fit body structures on which top level coaching and training were able to build on. Therefore their extended success.
It gives us an insight into what is required to be done when it comes to identifying and developing top sporting talent. What body structures should you be looking at. What social and genetic backgrounds should you be looking at.
Every sport at the highest international level requires particular physical characteristics. You can't be BIG if you are a distance runner, you better be tending towards lean. On that base you build endurance and strength. Similarly, you cannot be stunted if you are a pole vaulter or badminton player.
If by chance you are, you better be exceptional in the sport. Like Jan Ove Waldner was in Table Tennis or Muggsy Bogues in Basketball or Messi or Maradona in Football, the likes of which cannot be produced by a system. Remember, the intention being to maximise the chances of success.
If you follow Indian sports as we do you will find a disturbing pattern in recent times. We must be the country with the maximum withdrawls on the Badminton tour, our top wrestler failed to make weight in the wrestling worlds, both our top distance runner and top women's hurdler are out of action for months due to injury and the footballers, supposed to be the fittest of the lot, are so injury prone that teams and franchises ensure minimum playtime for them. The lesser we speak of injury management of our cricketers, the better.
It brings us to the question as to why this is happening so often and what needs to be done to prevent it. What we are also seeing currently is that the transition from junior or youth to senior is not happening. We are into the second batch after Sindhu and three after Saina for example in badminton and there is no light. Single flames are flickering in solitude in Athletics, Archery, Boxing, Golf, Squash, Table Tennis, Tennis, Weight-lifting and Wrestling- all sports that India should have been global powerhouses by now, but have in-fact regressed in in recent times. Just check out the result of the worlds this year.
These are also sports which require extreme levels of physical fitness and hard training. Gone are the days when golfers used to be non-athletes. Yes, even golf today requires top levels of physical and mental fitness and training to develop power consistently over longer distances and four days playing almost every week.
It is clear therefore that we need to begin where it begins. To select athletes with known history of malnutrition is a sin committed on the athlete and the sport itself. To select athlete for all sports from the same regions is also very daft. Welfare sports needs to be separated from Professional International Sport.
Discipline then needs to be instilled on those with strong nutritional and genetic bases because even a genius cannot deliver without training. Naturally then, only those properly schooled would understand such ethos and buy into it. It is then that you make a start. Else mediocrity as it is now, will be our ethos and we will continue to woefully underperform.
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