I have lost count of how many times people in India have asked: “Sport is part time/what job do you do apart from swimming?” This is where even the most educated people tend to think wrong. People assume that representing your country in a sport doesn’t take much effort and it is a piece of cake.

In order to give more context to the post and taking the example of swimming, a swimmer typically swims 50km a week plus 4 gym sessions. Assuming 50 training weeks including cold winters, a swimmer swims roughly 2500km a year. Then there are tons of other small things like diet, sleep, balancing academics etc which need attention. Given that much amount of work is done, there is still no guarantee that a swimmer will be a national champion or make it to the Indian team. Medals are won or lost by microseconds.

The gap between just participating at the state/national level and winning medals at international level is as big as the Amazon River. Every 4 years, a lot of arm-chair experts from various sectors just criticize India’s performance without having any insight into what it takes to reach the elite level.

If it was that easy and straightforward, tons of people would be pursuing the sport as careers. Next time you meet an athlete from any sport, try to understand what goes behind the scenes in order to win medals. #RaiseAwareness #Olympics2020