The future146;s Down Under

Comments by the country8217;s top sports administrator have been contested by the national Olympic association but, as the fur flies round, you can be sure of one thing: the Aussies will have set corrective measures in motion. The last time Australian sport was in crisis was 1976, when it failed to win a single medal at the Montreal Olympics. That prompted a high degree of introspection from which was born, five years later, the Australian Institute of Sport. The rest is history.

Planning for set targets in the future isn8217;t difficult; what is tough is predicting a trend and getting a system in place to cash in on it. When Steven Redgrave won his fifth consecutive Olympic gold for rowing in 2000 and became Britain8217;s greatest Olympian, the authorities were ready. Rowing isn8217;t a hot sport in the United Kingdom but it is well organised; and so, soon after Redgrave8217;s win probably the same day, rowing clubs throughout the country were given information packs on how to deal with youngsters who had so long seen the sport on television alone. There were loan deals organised for those wanting to buy their own boats. The moment had arrived and been seized.

The English Rugby Football Union RFU is doing much the same thing right now, given that the heroics of Jonny Wilkinson and his teammates have the capacity to lift a fringe sport right into the mainstream. Not overnight, not even over a year, but perhaps a decade or so later the pre-teens who stood in the midnight winter cold for the team to return from Australia will be kicking the oval ball.

This has been an exceptionally good year for Indian sport. Hockey, athletics, chess, golf, even women8217;s cricket. Some of those sports 8212; golf, chess 8212; are professionally organised and can take care of themselves. But has there been a flood of entries at hockey academies across the country in the wake of the national team8217;s winning of three tournaments? Remember, there was a time when everyone was watching Jugraj, Gagan Ajit 038; Co. How much of that interest translated into on-field participation? The academies, my information has it, have seen the standard 10 per cent increase.

And while we salute Anju Bobby George 8212; and there was a time everyone was queueing up to do just that 8212; are we any closer to finding her successor? If we are, the sports bureaucracy, which moves like Ben Johnson on steroids when it comes to trotting out a minister8217;s congratulations, is yet to inform the general public.

We do have some sights set on the future: on the Commonwealth Games seven years hence, and possibly the Olympics six years later. But even the most naive among us would find it hard to dismiss the stray cynical thought suggesting that sport 8212; or sportspeople 8212; may actually have nothing to do with all that.

Seize the Moment? It would help if our sports bosses learnt to first see the Moment.