When Ambekar Meetei Lairenlakpam won India’s first gold at the Dakar Youth Olympics, the result offered everything a sports desk claims to love: a young athlete, a close boxing final and an explosive finish. The IOC’s account says the 50kg bout was level before the decisive final round and ended in a split decision. For a few hours, India noticed. My irritation is that we have become excellent at noticing non-cricket athletes only after they supply a medal.
The Youth Olympics ended today after bringing together teenagers at the first Olympic sporting event held in Africa. The official Dakar overview explains the event’s wider purpose: competition, education, culture and youth opportunity. That context matters. These athletes are not miniature professionals delivered fully formed for our national pride. They are adolescents negotiating school, growth, travel, pressure and the sudden expectation that a medal should justify years of invisible work.
Attention arrives backwards
Indian coverage usually starts at the finish line. We discover a boxer during a final, a shooter during qualification or a runner after a record. Then we demand a biography, hardship narrative and patriotic quote before the athlete has cooled down. The years of district competition, parental expense, inconsistent facilities and coaching relationships are treated as prologue rather than the actual story. Cricket coverage works differently: prospects are discussed before selection, technique is analysed in domestic games and failure does not erase their existence.
I am not asking viewers to divide affection by government order. Cricket earned much of its audience through history, accessibility and storytelling. I am asking institutions to learn from that success. People care about athletes whose journeys they can follow. A federation that publishes irregular results and inaccessible schedules cannot then complain about limited coverage. A broadcaster that buys rights but offers no promotion cannot blame the public for missing events. Visibility is built, not wished into being after a podium.
Dakar should prompt a practical question: what happens to these athletes next Monday? Do they return to a coherent development plan, or to a maze of camps and selection trials? Adolescence is precisely when promising careers can be lost through injury, poor nutrition, educational conflict or abrupt coaching changes. A medal can attract support, but it can also attract adults eager to claim credit. The athlete needs a stable team more than another felicitation ceremony.
Do not turn children into projections
Youth sport carries a special ethical burden. India’s hunger for Olympic success can make every talented teenager a projected 2028 or 2032 medal. That projection sounds supportive but can become suffocating. Bodies develop unpredictably. Weight categories change. School matters. A young champion may later choose another path, and that is not a national betrayal. Development systems should expand possibilities rather than convert a child’s result into a debt owed to the country.
Coaching quality must therefore include safeguarding, communication and long-term physical development—not merely technical authority. Federations need clear reporting channels for athletes and parents. Camps require qualified medical and psychological support. Selection criteria should be published early enough to reduce dependence on whispers and influence. These are less photogenic investments than a stadium inauguration, but they determine whether talent remains in sport.
The IOC describes Dakar as fully gender-balanced across quota places, sports, disciplines and events. That should embarrass Indian sports organisations still treating women’s participation as an add-on. Equal places do not automatically create equal experience. Girls may face travel restrictions, unsafe accommodation, inadequate changing facilities and pressure to abandon sport earlier. If we celebrate their medals without addressing those barriers, our applause becomes a way of avoiding responsibility.
Funding must follow the athlete’s timeline
Elite funding often arrives after proof. That is understandable—public money needs standards—but the definition of proof should recognise development. A teenager from a strong programme may require international exposure before producing senior results. Equipment-heavy sports impose costs long before medals. Transparent tiered support, reviewed regularly, would be better than alternating neglect and jackpot. Athletes need predictable access to coaching, competition, nutrition and rehabilitation.
States also need to coordinate with national federations. India’s sporting map is uneven because some states build functioning systems while others announce cash rewards. Rewards are welcome, especially for families that have carried costs, but they do not substitute for pathways. A cheque after victory cannot replace a physiotherapist before injury, a suitable sparring partner before competition or a teacher willing to accommodate travel.
I would like public broadcasters to create a weekly youth-sport programme built around competition, not sentiment. Show full bouts and races. Explain tactics. Interview coaches about development. Follow athletes across a season and permit them to lose on camera without declaring a crisis. The habit of covering only winners teaches audiences that non-cricket sport exists as a medal delivery service, not as a culture of contests, rivalries and skill.
Cricket is not the villain; indifference is
Every time I make this argument, somebody assumes I want less cricket. I do not. I want the imagination applied to cricket to be applied elsewhere. Indian viewers understand a cover drive because decades of commentary taught them. They can learn the difference between a boxer controlling distance and merely retreating, or why a coastal rowing race turns, if coverage respects them enough to explain it.
Sponsors, too, should stop treating non-cricket athletes as seasonal flags. Long partnerships are more useful than Olympic-month campaigns. Support can include education, insurance and career planning, not just advertising appearances. A young athlete who knows one injury will not ruin the family is freer to train intelligently. That security is sporting infrastructure even if no ribbon is cut.
There is a counterargument that audiences determine markets and media cannot subsidise every sport. Fair enough. Not every event will command prime time. But digital distribution has lowered the cost of providing streams, highlights, schedules and archives. Public institutions receiving taxpayer support have obligations beyond immediate ratings. Private outlets can also discover loyal niches if they invest in reliable coverage rather than parachuting in for medals.
Dakar’s scale makes the neglect particularly silly. The IOC’s media material describes thousands of young athletes, hundreds of events and complete gender balance in a historic African edition. That is not a marginal sporting gathering. It is a laboratory of future styles, new formats and emerging champions. India sent a small contingent, making every athlete’s experience valuable evidence about where our pathway works and where it narrows too early.
Celebrate, then stay
I hope Lairenlakpam enjoys every congratulatory message. A teenager who wins a close international final has earned celebration without being immediately converted into a policy symbol. But adults must use the moment responsibly. The federation should document what enabled the performance, what support is next and how other boxers can access the pathway. Journalists should learn the names of the athletes who did not medal. Fans should be told when they compete again.
The true test of Indian attention is not whether we trend a champion’s name. It is whether we remain present for the next ordinary tournament, the first senior defeat, the change of category and the slow improvement that produces no viral clip. Cricket receives continuity; other sports receive eruptions. Continuity is why one ecosystem feels like a national culture and the others like quadrennial surprises.
My argument is ultimately simple. A medal is a result, not a development policy. Dakar’s teenagers have shown what talent can do when it reaches an international stage. India’s job is to make reaching that stage less accidental, safer and more sustainable. Applaud the gold today. Tomorrow, publish the calendar, fund the coach, protect the child and keep the camera switched on. That is how a country stops borrowing athletes for moments of pride and starts building a sporting life around them.
