where is the GOLD lost..

This is a tough one to judge ..
where in the supply chain of building athletes is the weakest link and where does India lose heavily in transforming itself into Olympics superweight.

We cannot be China, agreed and partly because we do not want to be like China either..
but dont we want to be like the US, Australia, Russia or atleast like Brazil in the sporting fraternity...

If we look back where we exactly lose out on sports, I can attribute to two factors
- a system which doesnt reward sports
- and people backing the system (you, me, your/my parents etc)

The state of athletes in India is never a rewarding one, in the career sense and monetary sense and hence there is no REAL incentive in pursuing a Gold medal for Olympics, becasue after that all you are left is a few grams of gold ..

What we need is a revolution in each sporting activity - like recently Tennis, where there is money and there is also a chance of winning the Olympics.. In the US this is true for most of the sporting events .. In Europe there is a lot of government and industrial support .. and in Russia and China ..there are the armies of the respective countries..

In India we lack corporates (thought TATA has been very active), the government and the army.. and we all know this .. not only this but we lack athletes..

Athletes lose out in making a career in life vs making a career in sports ..

personally we would have witnessed brilliant athletes amongst us in our school days..
by 12th standard.. this number is reduced by 1/10th or 1/100th.. with everyone cramming to get into the coveted engineering/medical/arts/commerce schools of India.. there goes our first big cut .. a cut as big enough it has been bleeding for the past 50 years with no Gold apart from Hockey.. (now we do not even qualify for hockey)..

the second cut .. in university level there is barely sporting activity.. apart from cricket.. for cricket there is a ranji level and now IPL, ICL etc .. where players do get rewarded with jobs is both corporates and prestigious banks .. and there is a good support system ..
Hockey enjoyed some decent level of support ..
Other sporting athletes are usually supported by railways ..

Imagine having a sports quota in Intel, Tata, Google, Reliance, ICICI, Infosys and all the super power house corporates .. (if someone represnts at national/state level or higher).. would this help???

these companies encourage/sponsor the training of one athlete from one sport (pursue government to make it mandatory).. and the companies are allowed to use the athlete for endorsment of their brand apart from making him write C, C++ programs ..

Would this change something over the next 20 years for India in sports ..???
I think we need much more concrete ideas than these .. oh yeah and the implementation