Indian Olympics

As I move away from watching the IPL and turn to other sports I enjoy, I decided this would be a good time to get caught up on Olympics as a whole and specifically any Olympic medal prospects from India. We can sum up the 2004 Olympics for India as "one billion people - one medal".

I confess that I am mostly ignorant and find the prospects very poor for this year's Olympics as well. I am assuming that the spat/make-up of Paes-Bhupathi, will give India a slender chance of a medal. I am assuming that the only medal winner from last Olympics - Rathore, will be another prospect. I am assuming that there might be some prospects in weightlifting though all I am hoping for is that it remains free of doping scandals. But are there any more out there? Does Anju Bobby George have a chance? Any other talents I should look to catch up on - please tell me there are some?


With P.T. Usha doing well in athletics in the 80s and 90s, I would have expected that by now, more than 20 years hence, we would have many more prospects - but it looks very dim... What can India do to improve its sporting prospects? As a nation we are not very sports inclined at all and it is very skewed towards cricket. At one point I could name most of the Indian hockey team, but I no longer can. Who is to blame for this? Are we just uninterested? What is needed to change the sports infrastructure in India? I am sure there must be a bunch of talented people who are not getting the opportunity.

As many of the cities are now planning to build cricket academies, why don't they make them Sports Academies? Cricket could be the focus 60% of the time, but maybe each of these academies can "adopt" another sport. Instead of the state governments exempting franchises from taxes for IPL, why not collect those taxes and spend it for other sports?

What are your thoughts on improving India's medal prospects at the Olympics?