From hinterlands to the global stage ..1
The biggest world event of the pandemic era is just a few days away. 2020 olympics to be held in July 2021, with no spectators, foreign or national, to be allowed and the hosting country Japan arranging it in a state of emergency. This is going to be a different olympics.?
The biggest contingent of 120 athletes from India will be at the arena. In 2016, we sent our biggest of up till that time, but our medal tally decreased from gold-less 6 in 2012 to a gold-less 2. But, then this is a different Olympics. And our sports persons are way different from their predecessors and anyone currently in the world.?
It is the tiny little stories of sportsmanship that have begun from our country, that we are wishing for happy endings in Tokyo. One such story is of a girl whose father is an auto-rickshaw driver and mother is a nurse at Ranchi Medical College. As a child, she practised while aiming for mangoes with stones. She learnt that in this discipline you first assume the correct stance and your body should be at or nearly perpendicular to the target with the feet placed shoulder-width apart.?
How she managed to train with the equipment which costs app 25000 for a 5 arrow set on amazon.?How, in a matter of years,?she is world no. 1 in women’s recurve archery after winning 3 golds in Paris World cup stage 3. The world will get answers when they see the projectiles Deepika Kumari will fire in Tokyo. 3 male archers accompany her including her husband Atanu Das for a medal quest in this olympics.
Until the age of 14 she excelled in sports like Huyen langlon, a Manipuri martial art, as well as boxing, tennis and skating, winning medals at the national games in these events. With an investment of ?150,000 by her father, she took up competitive shooting. She is the youngest Indian to win a gold medal at the ISSF World Cup.?Manu Bhaker will be accurate, precise and fast at this Olympics and we hope she bags another medal.
He comes from a family of farmers and lives in Meerut. He took up shooting at 13 and practised daily, traveling 15 km each way on buses to his club. At 16, he was the youngest Indian gold medalist at the Asian Games.He contracted Covid-19 last month. He did not train for 10 days after testing positive. He could only train for 2-3 hours at his home range in Meerut. On normal occasions he would begin his daily routine at 5 am with shooting practice time between 8 am to noon and 3 pm to 6pm. We hope Saurabh Chaudhary finds his rhythm and his cartridges hit the gold. With a total contingent of 15 shooters, India is aiming for many medals.?
These are just some from archery and shooting, there are many more stories from other disciplines. India has no dearth of sports gems, but what we lack is a sporting culture. Around 82% of individuals drop out of competitive sport between the age groups of 15 – 18 years, when researched further, it was found that some of the contributing factors to the dropouts are academic pressure and lack of career opportunities in sports.
Joy Bhattacharjya, former team director of the Kolkata Knight Riders and former director of the FIFA U-17 World Cup, explained that sub-par infrastructure in itself cannot account for the whole story. Of the 22 World Cups that have been won internationally, 10 of them have been won by South American countries such as Brazil and Uruguay, where the actual infrastructure is shambolic. Many footballers in Brazil, for example, come from the favelas (slums) of Rio.
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Bhattacharjya points to a different problem – the lack of a local sporting culture. “In India, there is no investment of the local community in sports. They do not watch matches; they do not come to cheer on their kids.” He contrasts this with the US, where they tell you proudly at gas stations that this was a guy who used to be our high school football hero because high school football is watched in the country.
This brings us to the thinking as to what sportsmanship we cultivate in our offices. Do we build a community of doers, triers and come to cheer them. Does your company celebrate the feeling that it takes a village to make things happen? What in your view can be done to improve sportsmanship at workplaces? While you ponder over, I will try to bring a few more stories of sporting gems of our country.?
Sources:
HR Tech Strategy | Value Advisory | Digital Transformation | Business Value Consultant at SAP SuccessFactors
3 年love the way you put it Vivek Anand..the reading becomes joy :)?
Data & AI Sales Specialist @ Google | VC Relationships - Google for Startups
3 年Very nicely put Vivek
Design Project Lead at Confluence Consultancy Services
3 年Very inspiring and a true eye opener