The article may be old, more than a decade old, but the issues it addresses are eternal. Why doesn’t India win many medals at the Asian Games and the Olympics? The brilliant article written for India Today back in 1999 by Ramesh Vinayak and Rohit Brijnath, titled ‘Our forgotten heroes‘, attempts to find an answer, but perhaps discovers too much.
Throwing light on the sorry state that many of India’s celebrated athletes find themselves in after their retirement, Vinayak and Brijnath give a heart-tugging account of how government/public apathy has caused scores of medal winners to regret entering the world of sport. In a country that rarely looks beyond cricket, being a sportsperson – even a championship-winning one – seems like a curse rather than a gift. With inputs from Amarnath K. Menon, Sanjay Kumar Jha and Sheela Raval, the article paints in vivid detail the dire circumstances that one-time public darlings like Makhan Singh, Mohammad Yousuf Khan and Sarwan Singh have had to go through in their post-sporting life.
For its incredible emotional impact and candid portrayal of the failings of India’s sports administration system, ‘Our forgotten heroes’ gets a big thumbs up from the Sportskeeda team.
You can read the full article here: Our forgotten heroes
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