@Nilgiri the reason i said rural Haryana , is the people are strong they have balanced diet and now as govt. is promoting sports so even parents are ok as they see how a good player can earn in sports too and its a carrer like becoming soldier in army or constable in police .
The bottom line is almost every village has akharas and some old man teaching the basics of wrestling
Yes that's what I mean by preset advantages.
The natural system in a state being somewhat aligned to what one can find in western (olympic) disciplines.
This ties into things like Kabbadi not finding itself present in olympics yet (so India cannot even medal anywhere, even though its athletic sport much more than most in olympics). Or even Cricket for that matter (given there is both baseball and softball).
Anyway, some (many) states do not have this (preset advantage)...there's simply other activities (athletic or otherwise) that are going on.... that do not have this kind of nurturing and ready alliance with international achievement potential.
That will be trickier and longer to develop....but gopichand shows the way. Need breakthrough success and then the guy that did it needs dedication to cultivate more. His success lives through not just him, but all those sishya that trained under him....i.e the system he started.
BTW, Haryana is 25 million people not 2.5 million
This olympics was full of hidden surprises for me too.
Lovlina Borgohain for example is under-rated one what she did.
Assamese girl, she took on higher ranked opponent (Taiwanese girl in QF boxing, who was bulkier than her too) and beat her through tenacity and determination....and letting all the training flow well.
She then hit inevitable brickwall as the true tier A folks came (as soon as SF, it was surmeneli from Turkey whom
@T-123456 calls "monster" heh).
But point is we got what it takes, we just need lot more of them to develop to tier A consistency.
In comparison, I knew Neeraj was pretty much shoe-in (and could even be gold) because he is peaking now compared to the season's best of the others in javelin top tier...
He has lot to give us still I feel (hopefully he can get to 90+ m range)...as he is young.
Though maybe not so ridiculous long career like that czech bronze medallist who is 38 years old!
I will say more on this stuff a bit later....to answer some things
@Jackdaws brought up in warkop discussion.