29/12/2024
Inside Chandan Roychoudhury’s journey in sports administration and his sporting vision for Bengal
The new president of Bengal Olympic Association on the need for grassroots development and better coaching in the state
03/11/2023
"Quality is a matter of demand, and it's exactly where the Sports Industry in India falls short.
Over the years, we must have posted around 2000 Sports Coach openings on our SportsBiznet platform, and it's disheartening to see that the majority of these ads ask for nothing beyond 'x' years of experience. Even the interviews seem to be wrapped up in a matter of minutes.
Now, the question we need to ask is, if we don't demand and expect sports coaches to learn, understand, and implement sports science, technology, data analytics etc, and instead focus solely on the numbers, how can we expect them to produce top-notch athletes?
This lack of demand for aspects other than basic coaching skills is causing a ripple effect throughout the sports ecosystem. Innovators introducing new technologies to aid coaches struggle to find business, institutes offering sports science education struggle to attract students, and products and services designed to enhance athletes' physical and mental aspects based on the latest research have a hard time gaining a foothold.
On the other side of the spectrum, sports coaches are reluctant to invest in furthering their education and skills, simply because nobody seems to ask for it. In fact, I'm not even sure if many of them have updated CVs.
So, while we're puzzling over why the quality of athletes remains stagnant, one significant reason is that we're not demanding an improvement in quality.
Needless to mention that the compensation for coaches has to be in line with the quality of their education and learnings.
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