Despite its massive population of more than 1.2 billion people, India consistently fails to grab many medals at the Olympic Games. Rio was no exception.
India sent its biggest-ever Olympic contingent to Brazil and optimists projected it would bring home a record 10 medals or more but it only came away with two.
“The present system requires thorough overhauling, especially in the areas of sports science and monitoring,” Injeti Srinivas, the director general of the Sports Authority of India said Monday.
While India is a super power when it comes to cricket and is a proven leader at developing some of the greatest brains and business leaders in the world, it just doesn’t have much success at the Olympic Games.
By Karan Deep Singh
1 Lack of Money
Most Indian athletes struggle to get enough funding for the training and equipment they need. Abhinav Bindra, India’s only Olympic gold-medalist shooter, who missed the bronze medal by a whisker at Rio, has spoken in the past about the lack of government funding.
2 Insufficient Infrastructure
Some of India’s top athletes say they don’t have easy access to the coaches, facilities and equipment they need to train at a world-beating level.
Karnam Malleswari, who won a bronze medal for weightlifting in Sydney in 2000, says she was “self-funded,” until she brought home a medal and even then the weights she was given to train on didn’t meet Olympic standards.
3 Not Enough Chances to Compete with the World’s Best
Indian athletes in sports like judo don’t have enough chances to hone their skills by competing at an international level.
“Our disadvantage was that we were way behind the world competition level,” said Mr. Srinivas at Sports Authority of India.
4 The Country is Cricket Crazy
Cricket is king in India and takes the lion’s share of government funding and private sector sponsorship. It also sucks up most of the great athletes.
Gymnastics, for example, got very little attention until Dipa Karmakar, India’s first female gymnast to compete at the Olympic Games, came tantalizingly close to winning a medal in Rio.
5 Lack of Media Promotion
India’s vibrant media companies have gotten behind everything from soccer and field hockey to kabaddi (and of course cricket) hoping to attract millions of sports fans and the advertisers that want to reach them. They have not shown as much enthusiasm about the Olympics.
“People often don’t know about Olympic sports,” said Ms. Malleswari.