‘ A SERIOUS LACK OF CONFIDENCE AMONG OUR ATHLETES’

Ithink there is a bit of truth in the statement, which we cannot disregard. But we also need to celebrate the victories, just because we have lost doesn’t make our victories any smaller. I think a lot has to change if we aspire to be successful at the Olympics in the future. And it should begin from the athletes themselves. They must change their attitudes. The biggest problem is, most of the athletes think that it is almost impossible to win at the Olympics. There is a serious lack of confidence among our athletes. But most importantly, we should get better infrastructure and for that we need better funding. We need good quality coaches and also experts who can tell us where exactly we are going wrong, which we certainly are. When I had put this idea out, people pointed at Ethiopia and asked how could they manage. But my point is why look at Ethiopia. I want to look at the UK. The UK model is something that we all should learn from. Currently, there are individual athletes who we can harp on. But we need to form better teams. Before the Olympics this year, we were hoping at least 8 to 9 medals and we thought if we were lucky enough the number might stretch to 10 or 11. Only when we aspire to reach the stars, can we hope for the moon. There’s definitely something wrong on our part and we need experts to point us that out. We must look and compare with the UK or the China model. But first we need to address the fact that this year, by and large, it was a failure for us and our teams are in a sorry state.