Abhinav Bindra finally did this for India, a country of over a billion people. What a tremendous feat. First for India since we haven’t had a Gold by an Individual performer so far. When Hockey gold medals stopped, we stopped getting any. Though there was this occasional tennis or a weight-lifting one.
Now, when we have got one the big question is that what next ? So while I was brooding on this topic, I got an idea and over last two days I have spoken about it to few people and everyone agreed. And I thought that I would rather share it here, may be it really make sense.
The idea is that we should start to focus on ONLY skill based games. In other words, we should not be spending money on Athletics or Soccer or any of those high stamina, physical power games. Rather spend time and money on Archery, Chess (I think its not part of Olympics as yet), Shooting, Badminton, Table Tennis etc and dont do 100/200/400 m races, swimming, boxing etc. If we have to choose athletics then may be get trained for Marathons and not 100 m sprints.
The logic is that probably our body is not built for those sports. Even our hockey was more skill and less power. Ramesh Krishnan who did some wonders was mostly on touch-play rather them power-play like Pete Sampras. May be the kind of climate we are in, the kind of food we eat, may be the kind of philosophy we all grow with is not suited for these sports. We are a tolerant lot and probably you need a much aggressive guy to make that 100 m sprint, which as a society we are lacking.
Just an idea. If you like it then comment. May be its the golden idea we have been waiting for 🙂