Why we falter at Olympics

Mind Boggling or baffling. Whatever you want to call it. A majority of Indian athletes perform far below their individual best in the Olympic games. Of 115-odd members of the Indian contingent, barring few exceptions, all performed much below their personal best. Athletes, archers, shooters, weightlifters, boxers, hockey players, wrestlers, judokas, table tennis and tennis players, and golfers are all in this category of below par performers. Exceptions are far and few. They can be counted on finger tips. Shuttler PV Sindhu tops the small list of players who gave their best and did the nation a proud. Sakshi Malik (wrestling), Deepa Karmakar (gymnast), Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna (mixed doubles in tennis), Srikanth Kadambi (badminton), Abhinav Bindra, Gurpreet Singh and Faraz Khan (shooting). Seven out of 118 had until the penultimate day finished among top nine in 2016 Rio Olympic games. How would one explain the performance of those who either got disqualified or left their contests incomplete.And then there were some who got scratched for making all foul throws, jumps, and lifts. A thrower clearing 18 meters plus back home makes all three foul throws with a best heave of below 14 meters has the suffix of Olympian tagged to his or her name. In athletics, for example, barring the steeplechase, where Lalita Babbar, who improved upon her national record in the qualifying round,could not repeat that performance in the final. Is competing in Olympics a mental block for our athletes. Why should they perform below their own best or their performances back home are jacked up to show more and more qualifications for Olympic games.Otherwise, there cannot be a reason for 90 percent of our athletes performing below their own best.