India's Quest to Olympics

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part;
the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well"

— Pierre de Coubertin (founder of modern Olympic Games)

It was heartening to see the Indian flag rising at the top of the podium when Abhinav Bindra clinched the only individual gold medal in the 10m shooting competition in the recent Beijing Olympics 2008. This was a proud day for India and the Indians to cheer about.

Abhinav really needs to be complimented for the way he held his nerve to hit the bulls eye in the last round which made all the difference.

This happens to be the first individual gold medal to be won by India and that too after 28 long years. India's populations stands at about one billion approximately. This very much says a lot about the sorry state of affairs about sports excluding cricket which has the players raking in lots of moolah.

Though we have sport organizations formed to take care of the development of sports in India, we hardly get to see the results. It is very sad to see that we are not doing much for the development of sports, though we have athletes who overcame all these obstacles to win medals for India.

We need to learn a lot from our neighbor China which starts working on its athletes from a young age. No wonder they have bagged so many gold medals at the Olympics. I surely hope this we take a leaf out of China to change the face of the dismal state of sports in India.

Though Abhinav had the money to fund his training, others are not so lucky. Hope the sports authority takes a note of this and starts working on it soon as the 2010 Common Wealth Games is to be held in Delhi.

I hope to see us winning more medals at the Olympics and the coming Commonwealth Games in 2010.