Indians @ olympics

I am blogging after a long time now coz work has been really hectic. So this blog has been a long time due. I have always wondered why we as a nation perform very poorly in sports. When we can churn out good academicians, CEO's business magnates and actors(!!!odd though) we have not been able to produce world class athletes. It pains me to see a guy like phelps from US saying he is gunning for 8 golds this time whereas we are searching for medals from entire Indian Contigent. Thank heavens Abhinav Bindra won the first individual gold medal for the first time in the history of India at the olympics. Its shameful to say the least when we see the national game Hockey(many of us would have gone for cricket :)) did not even qualify for the olympics.
So here we are back to the same question? Why does India fare so badly at the olympics. First thing that comes to my mind is that we dont have an attitude towards sports which means, the kids are told to consider sports as a pass time activity and the thought that the Education only fetches jobs is drillend into the young kids minds.We need to change that and allow our children to continue with their sports when they reach 12th class or college. Here what happens is that when a student reaches 12th class, all the extra curricular activities comes to a stand still. We need to allow people to carry on with sports or else we will be losing a lot of talented youngsters this way.
Next reason that I feel why india is failing is because of the poor infrastructure given to sportpersons who play games other than cricket. Its a well known fact that the Cricket players in this country are treated as demi gods. Its the other sportspersons who are the neglected ones who suffer from poor accomodation and training facilities. At the most these sportpersons get a job in ONGC or any of the banks or in the Airlines. Many athletes suffer from poor facilities like ther have been cases where the shooters have run out of ammunition and use poor weapons while practicing. I am not sure if Abhinav Bindra would have fetched a Gold medal if not for his wealthy background. He got to train abroad with the support of his wealthy parents. We need to stop showering all the attention to cricket which has been hyped enough and its high time we turn towards other sports. Otherwise the rich haul of medals for India in the Olympics will remain an unfulfilled dream.