Why India needs this website?
Let me first tell you about a quadrennial Indian ritual.
India goes to the Olympics. Most Indian athletes do badly. Being the Olympics, many Indians are watching and taking note of the superlative performance of the athletes from other countries.
Then the media gets to work. Criticizes the performance of Indian athletes and then moves to the people who run sports in India - Criticizes them for India’s poor performance. Finally, they wax eloquent on the over apathy towards sports in the country.
Then the citizens respond. They send sms’ to TV polls; participate in public discussion programs and comment on other forums. They also lament the sad state of affairs.
There is also a lot of regular ‘nation of 1 billion’ rhetoric.
Then everybody goes back to work.
The athletes continue to toil manfully. The media glare is no longer there. They are no more a part of public discussions.
The media goes back to reporting ‘breaking news’ about a ministers dog having malaria.
The public goes back to watching cricket.
The administrators continue their merry ways.
And then four years pass by.
Suddenly India’s poor performance at the Olympics doesn’t look very surprising.
What good is a population of 1 billion if for 3 years and 11 months they don’t care? They compare our performance with that of other nations. But do they ever compare their apathy with the interest that citizens of other nations take in their country’s sporting fortunes. In that case do they have a right to complain? But are they totally to blame?
Isn’t the media also to blame???
Yes, they are. But do we really expect them to change?
In that case someone needs to do what the media doesn’t – tell the people of this country about what goes on in the 3 years and 11 months between Olympics.
The more the people know, the more they will care. And the more they care, the more they will do.
And 1 billion can definitely do a lot if they know and they care.
The administrators for starters, better beware.
The more the public knows about what non-cricketing sportspersons do, the more they will want to help them. After all, they like to see success at the Olympics.
And don’t you think the corporates would also care if the public cared.
There’s never been a better time to start.
After all, we just had our best Olympic performance and there is a considerable interest in sports like boxing, badminton, wrestling and shooting. The non-cricketers seem to be holding onto the public’s attention. So let’s ensure that this good thing continues.
Let’s start informing the public about what goes on for 3 years and 11 months before the next Olympics arrive.
Let’s try and make a difference for what India can do at London.
www.indiaatlondon.com makes sure we don’t continue to wake up just once every four years. We keep India awake, all the time. Let the 1 billion count. Go India go.
come on india dikha doh… excellent initiative by your team… keep it up… all the best
I completely agree that the lot of sportspersons (non-cricketers) is a sorry lot. I also agree that official apathy and greed are responsible to a very great extent for the spectacularly unspectacular performance Indian sportspersons reveal at the Olympics. But it stops there!! I have some questions: Why should the viewers see something and applaud it if they have no interest in it? For example: Shooting. A noble sport, but how many of us will be willing to watch the guy adjust his sights, take some moments and then take a shot? Where is the exitement here? Or some people bent double shuffing along with hockey sticks? I think that the Indian sportspeople are just not world class. Sports is a very individual thing, and one does not need the adulation of millions to make his mark.
Hi Karan welcome to IAL
Thanks for your support
Hi Hari welcome to IAL
This is exactly the kind of attitude that we are trying to change my friend…I can describe the game of cricket in similar mocking terms but our objective is not to demean but to promote. To appreciate a game and its practitioners you need to know it well. And nobody is asking for adulation and endorsement contracts. We are just asking the people who wake up once every four years to keep their eyes open on a more regular basis. If you really care about Indian sports then you owe it that much. If you don’t then thanks for coming
the poor indian show at non-cricket athletic events will continue, as long as professional sports management (not just for endorsements) and professional training outsourced to private entities is not brought into the system. sports in india is too political, and another avenue for babus to make money. for every 100 crores pumped in by the govt into sports, i will be surprised if more than 2 crores actually get utilized as per the directives.
i really hope initiatives like this site help bring professionalism into sports. All the best India!
We need this site to rescue as many as Indian from a society with absolutely ZERO “Sports culture”
Kickass initiative Nimish. May be you should have a section for users to share their own sports experiences , upload their sports related pics etc…
For example, I’d like to talk about all my hostelmates in Malluland who were national swimmers who slogged their butt off , just to get a job in MEG or Indian Railways
A very good initiative. Hopefully we can all do our bit by spreading the word and you guys update us regularly.
Hey Joe, do send across the stories to nimish[at]indiaatlondon[dot]com. Will definitely help if users can participate in such a fashion.
Puneet and V, thanks for dropping by. I hope you guys subscribe to the RSS feeds and keep logging in again to share your comments.
Any free tickets to London?
Free tickets to London?
Well done guys… for the founders of this honourable website, I offer to host all four of them in London in the summer of 2012 (so long as I am gainfully employed here!)
Revolutionalising India to make it a Sports Superpower.
Compettition news: Some students of IIT-Madas and others from differents parts of India are going to lauch a website name-www.indiakhelo.com to promote sports in india. Their main aim is promotion of sports events in india and to find out new sports stars .But never Mind this space is way better..coz of 3 big reasons- no hanky panky stuff, we have already cleared the Beta-phase, and yes we have more feedbacks…Cheers! 
Karups, we have decided to take up your offer. We are definitely coming for London 2012.
Ruchi, if the guys at IIT-Madras are doing something to promote spots, then it’s a good sign. We are not competing against anyone here. The objective here isn’t to be #1 but to awaken India and bring much-needed attention to other sports rather than sit and crib every 4 years.
Creating awareness is a great start! But, also, the other sport administrators can’t cite cricket as an excuse for anything. It’s not cricket’s fault that people are crazy about the game. One sport need not thrive or flounder at the expense of another. It’s about creating the right environment be it through intelligent packaging or aggressive selling where every sport has it’s fair share of fans. Isn’t football, baseball and basketball quite popular in it’s own right?
Nimish,
Excellent site. It is very appropriate to come us with this wonderful mission.
@Varun
I completely agree that cricket can’t be used as an excuse for other sports not doing well. But currently even where we do well there is very little mention. Through IndiaAtLondon.com we are trying to fill this void.
@JKP
Thank you for the encouragement Sir.
[...] http://www.IndiaAtLondon.com is an effort in that direction. And I am proud to be part of it. This is what this website intends to do [...]
Best of luck, its not just India that needs to promote their athletes, here in the UK , we also are making sure the lull between games the athletes are not forgotten..
This is a very good initiative. Congrats on making an effort to bring about something like this. I will try best to be a part of this success as mush as possible.
As of today, our medal hopes for the London 2012 Olympics are the 3 medal winners from Beijing & Saina Nehwal. Through these 4 years, I believe more will find their names as possible medal winners in 2012. Here’s wishing them all the very best.
India, like Joe rightly mentioned doesn’t have a sport culture. And a good number of those who take up sport is because it gives them job security ie a job with the central or state government. This attitude has to change with sports given prior importance like studies in school.
I started a small football league in Chennai known as the Madras Football League. It survived for the 2 months in Chennai. I was able to rope in close to 50 odd football lovers to play on the weekends. But that was about it. Soon the interest waned, grounds difficult to find or those grounds which were available, were already booked. Legalizing the League wasn’t possible because of various objections from the Tamil Nadu football association. I believe this initiative here won’t face the same problem that I did.
Once again, Kudos. And 2012 London Olympics it is.
@ Ruchi
I am IIT-M alumini. The sports culture in IITM (though quality wise we are behind) is good. For the non informed, Schroeter is a hostel based event where respective hostels compete in 12+ different disciplines & the hostel with maximum points win the trophy. The good part is majority of the sports are Olympic events. Also the same competition is held every year at Inter-IIT level.
I believe the same pattern is followed by colleges, companies, sports associations around India but importance to it, is lacking. A change has to be bought about & with good money that change can happen. Sports needs to promoted as an ‘in thing’ rather than ‘out of the box’ thing.
I was a little surprised not see this here. Our major achievement after the Olympics 08.
India win Commonwealth Youth Games with 76 medals
http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3612813.cms
Being hosts, India wins 33 Golds, 26 Silvers & 17 Bronzes. 4 years back India finished 8th with 10 medals in all.
Aiming Glory at London 2012…
As a matter of fact, India now has a good bunch of athletes in few sports who can be expected to fare better in forthcoming Olympics. These talented athletes desperately need backing of we Indians. We as a nation have to rally around them and boost t…..
Great initiative by all those who have thought to come up with this plan
Indian sportsmen need as much support they can, and your idea of starting this website is kick-ass
Just one mention though…..we should give importance to sporting tournaments as they occur. I mean to say, representations from 85 countries will be participating in the Commonwealth Games 2010, which is like not even 2 years away
So IMO,rather than aiming for London 2012, we should be looking at Delhi 2010…and then take it on from there…and not straight away from this moment. As Nishanth has rightly pointed out, the youngsters have performed brilliantly in the Commonwealth youth games. Lets hope that some of these same players do well in the CWG 2010 as well
Joe, my school teacher and his class mate were national level swimmers as well during their school days. My school teacher’s name is Aldo Michael and his friend’s name is Milind. Milind used to top the swimming circuit and became a national champion, while Aldo came third
Then one day , when Milind was 18 years old, he decided to stop because he knew after 6 years of top class swimming, he would get beaten one day. Incidently, he was also approached by someone who offered him Rs 50,000 for shooting his pictures for two hours. And now, we know him as Milind Soman - first Indian male supermodel!
Nothing outstanding came off Aldo’s swimming career and as of today, he enjoys teaching children in my school
@Divingbrit
Your site seems to be borne out of a similar objective as IndiaAtLondon.com. Nice. Would be good to share ideas sometime.
@Nishanth and @Siddhi
Welcome to IndiaAtLondon.com. You’ll can actually help in taking forward the cause of IndiaAtLondon.com. Let all your friends know about it. Also, if you could get any of your friends to share their sports career story here, we could put it up on IndiaAtLondon.com. We’d love to have a section dedicated to sportsmen/sportswomen who never made it due to the lack of opportunity.
Oh..wow…!
I liked this site. At least there is someone out there to motivate people like us.
Its a great motivation for budding swimmers like us and other sportsmen and sportswomen. I will be a regular here
Welcome to IAL Natasha. Being a budding swimmer, Iam sure you keep in touch with the sport in India. Would you like to contribute to IAL in the form of articles on swimming or by just keep us posted on the latest developments
Such initiatives are eye operners and should not remain limited to just the few of us. It should be shared with the stake holders. The ones who can really make a big difference. This information is of-course valuable but needs to be spread across and brought to the notice of many more e.g the athletes, the media, corporates, politicians and the few million fans who take it seriously. And ya, I don’t feel we should be counting India a nation og one billion; the simple reason that many of us are not bothered and are not willing to make any diference.
Lovely Website,
I was wondering if we could add to this a small tag for Paralympic. Paralympic games are tha games held 3-4 weeks after every Olympic Games, at the same venue.
I shall try and send you some articles on Paralympics…!!!
Hi Mansi,…welcome to IAL…we would surely do…and your articles are most welcome…we would love some on the Olympics as well