Time to move the goalposts

When it comes to Olympic sport, it would be harder to find two athletes who are more capable of talking about what India needs to do to join the realm of elite sporting nations. One of them, Abhinav Bindra, became our only individual gold medallist in Olympic history when he won in the 10-metre air rifle event at Beijing 2008. And the other, Pullela Gopichand, the 2001 All-England badminton champion, is the national coach of an elite squad that boasts of Saina Nehwal, P.V. Sindhu and Srikanth Kidambi.

What makes their views on Indian sport important, however, is not their achievements. Bindra and Gopichand stand out as thinkers, planners and fearless crusaders who understand the larger problems that dog our sporting ecosystem. To top it all, they are never afraid to air their views-even if it upsets the overlords in the administration.

At the India Today Conclave 2016, in a session titled 'The Olympic Dream', Bindra and Gopichand were candid as usual, so brutally honest about India's sporting structure and so clear about how we are a million miles away from what needs to be done that some people would even consider their words to be a downer in an Olympic year.

Indeed, both of them felt that the once-in-four-years focus on how many Olympic medals India can win is actually a part of the problem. "To focus on the Olympics with three months to go as if something magical is going to happen, and after the Olympics something remedial needs to be done, is not the way. We need to look at sport very differently," Gopichand said. "We need to go deeper to ensure that a lot more people in the country are physically literate. Then we need to have some structures to ensure that they can all learn the fundamentals well. And then put systems in place so that the milk is churned properly, so that you have enough numbers for the cream to rise to the top. That's the only way to ensure you win 20, 30, 40 medals instead of four, six or eight." Once you breed excellence, he says, the medals will come.

It was Bindra, picking up on from the point, who hit the nail on the head. He summed up the entire problem with India's sporting system in one answer: "At the moment, you have to climb a mountain, and only when you climb the mountain does the support start coming in. In order to become a sporting nation, in order to get Olympic success to the level that we aspire to, we need to support the grassroots. We need to invest in young people at the start of their careers. We need to nurture them through, stick with them even when they fail-because they will fail." We need to make sure, he said, that they get up again.

Bindra, 33, has qualified for Rio 2016, which is likely to be his last Olympics. How confident does he feel about signing off with another appearance at the podium? "Well, in Beijing, I needed it. I needed to win a gold medal. In London, I didn't necessarily need it, I wanted it. In Rio, I need it. So that's the way it is!"

"On the sidelines of, say, an Olympic semis, what do you tell a Sindhu?"
Moderator Boria Majumdar to Gopichand

"You need to tell them that it does not matter. You cannot have the pressure of a 1.3 billion people sit on your head or the pressure of getting Rs 5 crore prize money if you win or fame get to your head. The bottomline is, you have got a target. You need to hit it. You are a player and you need to play your game. So the less you think of all of those things and play the sport as it is, you are going to get those results.... Sport is simple that way."

"About all the hype, basically it's all your (the media's) fault, don't blame us if we don't win."
Abhinav Bindra

"Yes. It's very hard, it is hard physically, it's hard emotionally, it's hard mentally, but I accept it, this is what I like to do, this is what I love and I'll do whatever it takes to be the best that I can."