MAKING OF A CHAMPION
10,500 athletes from 206 countries competed for a total of 2488 medals in Rio. Or, only one out of every 2.8 million stands on the podium. An Olympic champ is made of solid fundamentals, sweat and support. We try to break down the factors:
NEED TO START EARLY
Michael Phelps, the most successful Olympic athlete ever, took to swimming at the age of seven. Diagnosed with ADHD and scared of putting his face underwater, he prevailed over both hurdles. Influenced by elder sisters and US swimmers at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, he began full-fledged training and at 10, held the national record in the age group before Bob Bowman took him to North Baltimore Aquatic Club. ‘World’s greatest athlete’ Ashton Eaton — who defended his decatholon title in Rio - wanted to be a Ninja Turtle (specifically “the purple one” aka Donatello) and decided to take up Taekwondo as a fiveyear-old and got his black belt eight years later. Stints in football, American football, basketball and wrestling followed and made him a well-rounded athlete. Usain Bolt and Mo Farah played cricket and football as kids respectively — the two sports’ losses athletics’ biggest gains. It is not just about finding and focussing on that one sport, as long as a child picks up any sporting discipline early enough.
EFFECTIVE SUPPORT SYSTEM
Then there are the factors out of an athletes’ hands. An individual’s talent can be easily recognised, but nurturing and harnessing it to be competitive at the highest level requires support. The raw talent needs a coach, infrastructure, equipment and facilities - all of which depends on the the country that individual has been raised in. Nations with planned economies and robust sporting culture will almost often do better. India, where many still live by the words ‘padoge likhoge banoge nawab, kheloge kudoge hoge kharab’, needs to learn that ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’
PUTTING IN HOURS
Starting out early helps athletes reach freakishly high levels, especially in sports that involve extensive handeye coordination and fine motor skills. But the skill sets are merely the building blocks. An elite athlete needs to practice and train the skills past the point of autonomy - where the mechanics become muscle memory. And there are no shortcuts, the more hours you put in, the better you get. An elite archer will often shoot up to 400 arrows, silver-medallist PV Sindhu’s coach Pullela Gopichand revealed that the duo can go through as many as 1000 shuttles per training session. The exact same number of Produnova vaults Dipa Karmakar claims to have executed in the run-up to Rio. The hard yards in training, when combined with mental toughness, give one the best chance of succeeding.