Goa has been riding on a wave of success, clinching nearly 50 medals so far with a rich haul of six gold medals in Sepak Takraw, a lesser-known sport, also called kick volleyball. Outstation athletes kept Goa’s flag flying high, with the State winning six gold medals on Friday.
The rich haul will put Goa’s name notches higher on the standings, but the question persists whether it can take our Goan sportsmen higher. While the narrative of Goan versus outsiders plays on the spirit of the games to some extent, there are positives to take and lessons to learn for Goan athletes. We must reconcile with the reality of sport that performance is all that counts.
In a welcome move, Sports Minister Govind Gaude announced cash for Goa’s medal winners. All gold medal winners are to get Rs 3 lakh each, silver and bronze winners Rs 2 lakh and 1 lakh, respectively, and coaches to get cash rewards according to the level of the success of their athletes. Lest we forget, Chief Minster Pramod Sawant promised government jobs to all Goan sportspersons winning national and international medals.
While promises are made and sometimes forgotten, Sawant and Gaude must ensure that they promptly honour their words without delays like in the past. The State government has a poor track record, with delays as long as three years in fulfilling promises of cash incentives, and it’s sad that repeated reminders have to be sent.
However, more importantly, it is time that the government looks beyond cash incentives and considers securing the sporting careers of budding athletes. The more significant challenge lies in grooming talent, nurturing it and ensuring that these success stories don’t die with this edition of the national games.
There is a combination of efforts that go into making sports stars ” hard work, grit, determination, and support in terms of finance and facilities. The State has to remain invested throughout the journey of a sportsperson with the hope that rewards will be forthcoming. There are no quick fixes and no shortcuts. Rushing with cash awards is a more trendy way of grabbing headlines.
The Goa government needs to learn sporting lessons from States like Odisha, which is emerging as a ‘sports hub’ of India with facilities compared to those in Australia, taking care of not only the infrastructural side but also allied fields like integration of sports science, harnessing talent and funding. Goa, which boasts of good infrastructure, was on the receiving end when, on a rainy day, the state-of-the-art Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium started to leak, and the recently renovated Athletic Stadium at Bambolim had huge puddles of water.
The bright side is that most of Goa’s success stories in these national games came not out of the infrastructure that the State has. They came from remote villages where athletes trained independently and with little support. The need of the hour is to scout talent and expose them to better training and conditioning.
Goa entered the national games as an underdog, but the medal tally should serve as an impetus for Goans to scale up their performance and look at sports more seriously. It’s time to stop complaining and start scaling up the game.
