The Hidden Truth Behind Indian Athletics

How Individual Dreams Are Being Destroyed Inside the Relay System

By Dr C Ajithkumar
International Athletics Coach

Introduction

India speaks proudly about sporting growth, Olympic dreams, corporate investments, and high performance centres. Every day, promises are made about transforming the nation into a global sporting power.

But very few people are willing to discuss the painful reality faced by grassroots athletes and coaches who build champions from nothing.

Finding a talented athlete is never easy.

A coach must identify talent at a young age, provide proper training, arrange nutrition, purchase shoes and equipment, and often spend personal money for travel and competition expenses.

Years of sacrifice, struggle, injuries, failures, and financial hardship go into developing one national level athlete.

Behind every successful athlete stands a grassroots coach.

The Reality After National Selection

In India, the moment an athlete wins a national medal and enters the Indian camp, the system often sidelines both the athlete's individuality and the coach who built them.

Today, one of the biggest concerns in Indian athletics is the unhealthy overemphasis on relay events.

Many talented athletes with the potential to succeed internationally in individual events are pushed into relay pools and made to focus almost entirely on baton exchange training for years.

Slowly, their rhythm, confidence, technical strengths, and dreams in their own events begin to disappear.

Amoj Jacob is one example frequently discussed in this context.

Athletes with the potential to shine individually become trapped inside a system focused mainly on relay performance.

Yet after years of relay focused preparation, the country recently witnessed relay teams getting disqualified because of baton drops.

This raises an important question:

Who is accountable for destroying individual careers in the name of relay success?

The Exclusion of Grassroots Coaches

Where is the place for the coaches who spent eight to ten years building these athletes from the grassroots level?

Why are the original coaches excluded once the athlete reaches the national camp?

Why are coaches who produced multiple Indian athletes still denied opportunities within the Indian national coaching structure?

Even coaches who have developed nearly twenty five Indian athletes are often kept outside the system.

If such experienced grassroots coaches are ignored, the credibility of the entire sports structure must be questioned.

The Ready Made Athlete Culture

The current system increasingly promotes a ready made athlete culture.

Instead of identifying and nurturing talent from villages and ordinary families, many organizations prefer to take already developed athletes at the final stage and claim success.

This trend is visible not only in government systems but also in major corporate sports models.

Organizations like Reliance Industries and JSW Group are often criticized for focusing more on collecting established athletes rather than building champions from the grassroots level.

The same criticism must also apply to certain private Olympic academies and elite training centres operating across the country.

Many of these institutions receive government support, public funding, land allocations, subsidies, or indirect benefits in the name of Olympic development.

If public money is involved, public accountability must also exist.

India's Olympic Vision and Internal Reality

India is preparing to host major international sporting events and dreaming of future Olympic success.

Before presenting itself as a global sporting nation, the country must seriously examine what is happening inside its own athletics system.

The Need for Transparency and Accountability

There should be transparent government monitoring systems to evaluate:

• How many athletes are genuinely developed from the grassroots level
• How many athletes are simply transferred from other coaches or academies
• Whether athletes are protected in their individual events
• Whether grassroots coaches receive recognition and participation
• How government funds are actually being utilized

Without accountability, Indian athletics risks becoming a system where credit goes to powerful institutions while the real creators remain invisible.

Public money and national resources should first protect genuine talent creators -- the grassroots coaches and the young athletes struggling to survive -- not just polished systems presented for media attention.

The Bigger Question

A nation's sporting strength should not be measured by the number of stadiums it builds.

It should be measured by how well it protects the dreams of a child running barefoot on a village ground.

India does not only need new infrastructure.

India needs a new mindset.

The Way Forward

The country needs a sports policy that protects individual athlete development.

Grassroots coaches must be given representation and respect within the national system.

The coach who creates an athlete should continue to have a role in that athlete's journey.

Otherwise, India may continue producing relay squads, but it will struggle to consistently produce world class individual champions.

The nation wants medals. But before medals, the nation needs fairness.

A country preparing for the Olympics must pay attention to these realities before it is too late.

Author

Dr C Ajithkumar
International Athletics Coach