The talent dilemma

I ask you one question. You take three boys, one born in Mumbai, one born in Sao Paulo and one born in Paris. Is there a difference between the three after one day, football wise? No! Is there a difference after one year? No. After 15 years, is there a difference in quality of the three players? I would say yes. And if I ask you if after 20 years, is there a difference in the quality of the three, I would say yes. And that in our opinion, is only down to, not because when you are French, you are a better football player, but just because you got the education that is needed to develop a football player.

— Arsene Wenger

A country of 1.4 billion does have a potential Wimbledon champion, sub 9.8 second 100 meter sprinter within its borders. Our current problem is he or she does not know who they are. This is primarily because not enough of them get enough time on a field, range, pool or pitch. And not enough of them get to try enough sports early enough or often enough to figure out what they might be uniquely adept at.

Much like the thousand turtle hatchlings that start on the sand for one to make it to adulthood. For one potential champion, the system needs to churn through a ridiculous amount of talent. And talent isn’t just anyone willing to try. It needs to be someone who has the unique physical and mental traits suited to the sport they want to excel at.

A shooter needs isometric strength to hold steady. A calm demeanour is needed to keep the rifle pointed firmly at the target as you squeeze the trigger and handle the recoil.

A sprinter needs oodles of explosive muscle fibre and a unique capacity to recruit as much of that muscle as possible for short bursts. The sprinter would have a combination of stride length and stride frequency and tempo.

The Usain Bolts are physical specimens built for sprinting. They look the part. But someone called Su Bingtian who is 9 inches shorter clocked in a 100-meter time within a quarter of a second of Bolt. Bingtian pulled this off with technique.

One of the greatest dilemmas in elite athletic performance is how absolutely divergent talent looks. No two champion athletes, be it in tennis, sprinting or shooting, look, act, move or behave the same. This is a terrifying prospect for scouts and coaches who need to standardise filters. Talent can look like Bingtian or Bolt and everything in between.

India has feeders and scouts for finding talent in pithy commentary, badminton, cricket, wrestling, moving pictures, potential engineers turned investors/managers and politicians. Scouts need to spot talent. Now what?

Coaching. Lots of it. Protein. Lots of it. Calories. Lots of it. Sleep. Lots of it. Funding for all the above.

I have no clue how many Bingtians we need to start with to end up with one that can reach the finals of a World Championships or Olympics. The odds would make being Olive Ridley turtles feel lucky (only an estimated 1 in 1000 make it). For every Bingtian to make it, the following needs to happen:

Scouts who can look for more than just physical size. Speed, stability and strength requirements vary drastically across different sports. Having a keen eye to find talent that exhibits this and feeding them into a process that lays down technique, work ethic and nutrition is just the start.

A good coach who spots what kind of technique the athlete needs. Effective coaches recognise there is no one optimal way. They make tweaks all the time. When technique settles, they make more tweaks. Recognise technique evolves. And keep plugging away at it. Athletes make changes to their technique through their careers.

A good coach who does not throw too much volume, too many competitions or too much activity for the sake of character building. Indian coaches confuse physical exertion for building mental fortitude. Probably the result of too many sports movie montages.

Tide over injuries. Lots of them. This is easier said than done. It calls for doctors who understand exercise, sport coaches who don’t rush athletes or double up as strength and conditioning coaches, strength coaches who don’t just dabble in powerlifting, nutritionists who can coax young athletes to eat enough calories, protein and healthy fat.

Effective coaching lies at the intersection of finding the right volume, right words, knowing the right things and delegating to the right person. Producing a winning athlete is a team sport.

Takeaway

We don’t have enough kids trying enough sports for long enough to spot enough of them to feed into a well-oiled machine of coaches, administrators, doctors, nutritionists, strength coaches and competitions to hone talent. The social and economic incentives do not yet exist at the grassroots levels. We need enough funding to help young athletes tide over rough training patches, injury and not drop out at the earliest sign of trouble. Athletes and the systems that produce them are built over decades. These decades might have little to show for it in the early years. More than anything else, we need them to have the time and social support to prop up these endeavours. Funding exists only when there are eyeballs on a sport.

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