The sleight of hands versus the fleet of legs - a SWOT analysis

It was another hopeless performance by Indian athletes, barring six of them who succeeded in gaining a medal for their country. Though India bettered their Beijing performance in the medals count; by failing to win even a single gold medal, we fell way short value-wise. Finishing on the top of the podium has always been valued higher by the international community, no matter how many bronze or silver does a country manage to get.

Running through the medal tallies of the top 10 nations at the end of the Olympics, I felt that as you move down the list, the gold medal count starts diminishing at a rather alarming rate. With only seven or eight golds under their belts, some nations are conveniently ranked inside top 10. It only indicates how difficult it is, if you are not an athlete from China or USA, to win a gold medal. So, as an Indian fan, we need not be entirely dismayed about our indifferent performance this year at Olympics.

We have got six medals at the end of the day and if only each of those was turned to gold with a bit more effort from our athletes, so to speak, then we might have also found a place in the top 10. Now it is time for us to forget what has happened and look ahead. The situation now demands a sort of SWOT analysis to have our athletes better prepared for Rio de Janeiro.

Looking at the disciplines in which our athletes have been successful in winning medals, I feel we are good in the usage of our hands than our legs. It is either the sleight of hands or the speed in an athlete’s legs which won us medals at the end of the day. We Indians have really never been natural athletes and as a result we are finding ourselves ostracized from the rest of the world population, barring the ones from the subcontinent.

That leaves us with very few disciplines of sports in which we can showcase our skills. Be it in Beijing or London, our medal winning capabilities are seen restricted to games like Shooting, Wrestling and Boxing. Of course we added a badminton bronze this year but even here, it is only the movements of the athletes that count more than the sort of running which we see in other sports. An athlete’s dexterity lies in the way he uses his forelimbs to emerge victorious. Of course in the case of shooting, your concentration and aim are equally important, but finally it is your finger that pulls the trigger at the right time.

So, it is time for the Indians to identify their strengths and capitalize upon them. I do not see any fun in rooting for a sport like hockey which has now become a physically demanding sport. Even sports ministry has categorically stated hockey has never been our national game. Hailing a sport as a national game and finding ourselves at the lowest level literally makes no sense. So, we need to think practically and concentrate only on those sports with extreme focus which would help us in garlanding ourselves with nothing less than an Olympic gold medal in the next eight years or so. Even in a non Olympic sport such as cricket, Indians have been producing traditionally good quality spinners, may be precisely because our ability in employing our hands to the fullest extent.

What if one Deepika Kumari failed to make an impact by getting eliminated very early in a game like archery which does not require quicker mobility? She was expected to win at least silver, if not gold, being world No.1 in that sport. Such upsets are bound to happen but overall, Indians did not disappoint in those sports in which they were expected to do well. Had she also won a medal for us, our medal count would have gone up to 7 in this year’s Olympics. It only means we are better than other countries in non mobile sports. Saina, in her discipline, is better than every other athlete in the world except Chinese. So, going by what has happened in this year’s Olympics, if we begin to work now onwards on our strengths by dedicating wholly on perfecting our skills, then for sure, we will be getting at least seven or eight gold medals in 2016 and it may augur well in our favour to be in the list of top 10 ranked nations.

Having known our strengths, it is time for us to understand the other opportunities which the world of sports offers us. I mean there are certain other sports in the world in which we can invest our abilities. Sports such as Yatching, Rowing and Canoeing require the skills of hands in which we are good at already. So, why not we try our hands in such sports where the competition worldwide is limited unlike football, hockey etc? We are already good in weight lifting in which we won a bronze in Sydney Olympics. We can be hopeful of producing one or two really good lifters in this area.

Even athletics is not all about sprinting and running which are gray areas for us, to compete against the rest of the world. But, we can certainly put in a lot of efforts to develop decent throwers of shot puts and hammers. The sports such as long jumps and high jumps may not really be our cup of tea because they require a momentum in the form of good running to cover the distance and height respectively. Even table tennis is one of those sports where we can start to make an impact, notwithstanding the same is being dominated by Chinese. Just like a Saina in badminton, who knows, we may produce a couple of professionals who can match the Chinese professionals, if we work on it seriously.

So with the help of the hold that we already have in some of the sports, in view of our strengths, by 2016, we can hopefully win 6 to 7 gold medals without a doubt, if we are prepared to work hard. The six medals which we have got presently, will work only in our favour as it would inspire many youngsters to take up those games more passionately. As far as other opportunities I mentioned, taking into account our ready-made skills, I feel we can start to win medals in those categories of sports, may be by 2022, wherever the Olympics games will be scheduled to be held.

Now, let us look into the other two aspects of SWOT analysis which are identification of our weakness and scrapping away the threats. As I already said, we are not sprinters or marathon runners by any stretch of imagination. So, the importance which is given to those sports has to be reduced gradually and the focus has to be shifted to those sports in which we have a chance to excel. In this manner, we can wilfully restrict the focus on sports such as hockey, football, tennis, running, basket ball etc. Since these sports are watched globally, youngsters tend to develop more interests in embracing them. But pragmatically, these sports do not come naturally to us as we are not fleet footed as the people from the other nations.

So it all depends on how we market other sports which are not taken up passionately by youngsters, though we are seemingly good at those. The sports ministry can invest more on such sports where we spot a gold medal winning opportunities. Lack of funds and investments are the basic reasons, or should I say threats, behind certain sports not growing in India at all. A Sushil Kumar or Yogeshwar Dutt does not enjoy the sort of sponsorship and respect at par with our cricketers. Absence of enough money is the real threat which discourages parents to have their children trained in some of the other sports. If that is taken care of, then it will be easier for the youngsters to excel in other sports.

That was my little SWOT analysis which I could come up with, if we were to aspire for more gold medals in the upcoming Olympics. I am sure a country, as densely populated as ours, needs to produce more athletes and the only way to do it is to identify our strengths and work on it. After all, “Jack of all trades is a master of none”.