Despite its massive population that is second only to China, India has achieved very modest success in international athletics. This documentary from Al Jazeera looks at a program that seeks to identify promising young athletes in remote tribal areas and then groom them for success at the national and international levels. The documentary focuses on two of them Ravikaran and Nayana. Usain Bolt has been the inspiration for them.
But it is more than about athletics. The success of young people brings about larger changes in their communities. Ravikaran is from a small community known as Siddis who are believed to be descended from slaves from Africa brought to India by the Portuguese, something I had not known about before. They suffer from the same racial and color prejudice that the US is familiar with.
Nayana is from a different community that is also underprivileged. Her success (she was selected to attend an elite coaching program in the US) has opened the eyes of her traditional-minded community and made them realize that girls should have equal access to education and athletics.
Whilst progressive sports programmes seem worthy of support, things can also go badly seriously wrong. The most recent example (that I am aware of) is from teh “U”K, Child gymnasts abused and denied water, food and toilet breaks — the damning report on British Gymnastics (“Children as young as seven were physically abused; British Gymnastics and UK Sport ‘put medals above welfare’”).
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This is completely peripheral. It’s as though Mano blogged about a program to give indigenous people access to schooling and your response is, “but here’s a story about a school in a different country that beat their students”. Not relevant.
… I mean the video isn’t even about gymnastics. Talk about a stretch. :-/
I’ll have to watch the vid later.
I’m not usually into sports, to be honest. I mean, we still have school football teams and boxing hasn’t completely fizzled out. And using baseball as an example, even making it into something as exclusive as the minor leagues doesn’t pay very well. So sports in general definitely doesn’t seem to be focused on providing opportunities for athletes.
Subverting that general trend though? That’s interesting.
Cool video! I was surprised to see the word ‘finish’ at the finish line. I shouldn’t have been because earlier in the video they were talking about how English is a more universal language they were teaching the students.