FINDINGOUR SPORTING GENE

A competitive, structured grassroots programme and a robust public-private partnership model where everyone involved is singing from the same song sheet, is our surest way to success.

- Parth Jindal

I was asked to write this piece a few days after the Paris Olympic Games got underway, and I must admit, the way I feel about everything I have expressed is even more pronounced because it is being written after watching India win medals with confidence and miss podiums by a whisker. We may not have surpassed our tally from Tokyo, but we had a big number of athletes who came very close to stepping on the podium, and if those fine margins went our way, our numbers would have doubled. There is a sense of despair at what could have been, but with it is also a feeling of confidence of what can be.

Neeraj, Manu, Swapnil, Aman and the men's hockey team were phenomenal, but so were Vinesh, Mirabai, Nishant and Lakshya.

Avinash Sable may have finished 11th overall, but he was the first male athlete from India to qualify for the final of the 3,000-metres steeplechase event. No Indian male badminton player had ever gotten past the quarterfinal stage, and Lakshya changed that. We had performances that didn't translate to medals, but they were ones that give us renewed hope.

Going to the grassroots: While we're still reeling under the magnitude of the world's biggest sporting spectacle and are in awe of all that great sporting nations have achieved, it is the other end of the spectrum that we need to look at when it comes to building a culture that will get us to where we want to be-the grassroots.

Our revolution needs to begin at the school and college levels where a highly competitive sporting structure should be introduced across government and private institutions.