“Sundays with Purav” is a 11 part series in collaboration with our very own, Purav Raja. Through his first hand experience of competing on the ATP Tour, Purav aims to educate Indian tennis parents, fans, and community, in general, about what our country needs to do to be called a sporting nation.
Catch other episodes of “Sundays With Purav” below –
I am writing this at a time while I feel helpless watching every sporting event and wondering when the next time Jana Gana Mana will be played in an Olympic arena and when the world will stop for a few minutes to see our flag raised above theirs.
It is time we understand one very crucial point and that is simply that athletes are not born anymore – They are PRODUCED.
Talent is the most overrated word in the Indian dictionary.
To add to that point – All of our Indian athletes are nothing short of pure miracles of immense dedication and insane amounts of hard work to just be on the same platform as the rest of the world.
As a country, India does not deserve these athletes at all and its a pure tribute to every one of them that we have 119 heroes standing tall in the world’s biggest Olympic sporting arena. Pakistan has 6 and Sri Lanka has 9.
Guys, you have to understand that Rafael Nadal’s only goal in life was to be the best player to ever touch a tennis racket ( yes he’s told me that) -18 Grand slams later I think he’s looking good :).
Michael Phelps was born to swim and had numerous people aligning his dream since he was a toddler to become the best Olympian ever lived-24 medals later they achieved that dream 🙂
These things require an unbelievable amount of dedication/attention to detail and serious amount s of money and no matter how much a JSW and Olympic gold quest (by the way they are amazing ) try to change our system, it will require a collective effort from our whole country to make my dream of 20 Indian medals in the next Olympics come true.
I don’t want to dwell too much on government and ministers as I honestly don’t know enough about what they do and the complexities of their jobs but I think it will require bold decisions from every person -parent- athlete and minister in this country if we are to become a world-class sporting nation.
Sports is a business and it’s serious and it’s time we treated it like one.
I love all the leagues we are doing in cricket, tennis, soccer, kabaddi, football and have immense respect for what it’s done to our country however it’s time to now think of India as a country on a mission to win Olympic Gold Medals.
As one of my suggestions, I think the next few years should go into investing heavily in our swimmers, gymnasts, shooters , athletics, and wrestling. These have most medals on stake too at Olympics and worst infrastructure – It doesn’t make much sense right.
This aside we should also look into building first-world facilities and a solid Indian Olympic base camp which is made solely responsible for our success at the Olympics.
We can get Ronaldo, Federer and Usain bolt to India but I think what we need is a few more Bindras.
Impossible is nothing 🙂 Thank you for your time,
Purav Raja
