: India Needs to Stop Pitting Sports Academics as Opponents It Needs to Start Now #IndiaNEWS #Sports #MakingSportWork: Celebrate National Sports Day with stories of heroes who have spent years working

Posted in: #IndiaNEWS #Sports #MakingSportWork

India Needs to Stop Pitting Sports Academics as Opponents It Needs to Start Now #IndiaNEWS #Sports
#MakingSportWork : Celebrate National Sports Day with stories of heroes who have spent years working to improve lives around them through sports. Read more from this exclusive series by The Better India and Sports and Society Accelerator here.

Victories and medals bring to the fore the life stories of their winners, shining a light on the challenges they have overcome on their paths to success. This was evident at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Achinta Sheuli’s incredible journey, Avinash Sable being ‘weeded out’ of a talent identification programme as a youngster, and why Tejaswin Shankar needed the help of Delhi’s High Court bar before conquering Birmingham’s high jump bar made for compulsive reading.

These proved to be an unmissable backdrop to India’s story at the quadrennial event. The steady upward trajectory of success for India was reinforced at this edition with many first-time medalists and athletes succeeding in a variety of disciplines, including lawn bowls, judo and athletics. These are positive indicators of a promising future for Indian elite sports.

India’s Avinash Sable bettered his own national record by almost a second to win the silver medal in the men’s 3000m steeplechase at the Commonwealth Games 2022. @avinash3000m @birminghamcg22 #CommonwealthGames2022 #Birmingham22 #SilverMedal #TheBetterIndia�?� pic. twitter. com/5M1dWq1smn— The Better India (@thebetterindia) August 6, 2022

While achievements at major sporting events remind us of the soft power and great joy we derive from the international successes of our compatriots, they also give pause for thought. What is sport’s role in our society? What more can we do with it? Awakening the system to the full potential of sports, and the role it can play in building a healthier, fitter, more inclusive, and empowered India, is a project we must all get behind.

The health of Indian sports is, for some undefined reason, measured primarily by the country’s final standing on the medal table. The National Sports Awards points system is, naturally, designed to tabulate international victories. It is not uncommon to hear stories of parents pleading with PE teachers and coaches to develop their still-toddler wards into Olympic champions. These can be read as positive trendlines. However, to get the most out of what sports have to offer us, we must expand the measure of sporting success beyond medals alone, and recognise that sport does not have only one story to tell.

t. co/E1mKgNXnQt Video: Mirabai Chanu Creates History, Wins India’s 1st Medal at Tokyo Olympics pic.