One more Olympics has gone by. A total of 974 medals were won by 87 countries; 54 countries won at least one Gold The US flew home with the best medal tally of all time for that country with 121 medals. Notwithstanding the individual brilliance and the face saving medals of PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, India's performance is the poorest among all big countries.
The discourse on this is an unhappy one: there has been a lot of handwringing, blame on the Sports Ministry and sports administrators, complaints about lack of facilities, grumbles about corruption being the villain, and so on. India says the same things, once in four years, during and after every Olympics. It should instead look for simple lessons, develop a strategy to win medals and execute it diligently. No, I don't believe that india should be planning for the Olympics scheduled eight or twelve years from now. While long-term thinking is good, any leader will tell you that it is too slow. We should aim to win a lot more medals in Tokyo in 2020. But how?
The final medals tally by country tells all sorts of stories. The top 22 countries- those with a double- digit medals tally with a minimum of three gold medals-took home a total of 702 medals, or 72 per cent of all medals. The top ten suggests that only the established West (the US, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Australia) along with Russia, Japan and Sluth Korea will continue to dominate. The emergence of China is explained as "you know the Chinese can dictate anything, so they are not comparable." It is often implied that wealth and size are the reasons for the success of these countries. They have the facilities and programmes in place. They are bound to win. So goes the argument and acceptance.
This logic should be probed further. Olympics medals are won by people between the ages of 15 to 29, with a few exceptions on either side of this age band. I looked at the number of medal wins in relation to the population in the age group 15 to 29 In each country, for which data is available. This was juxtaposed with medals won, to calculate the numbers of medals won per lakh of population in this age group. The story changes dramatically.
