Sportstar·India·Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 01:47 PM UTC

In the race for medals, are we losing sight of childhood?

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Raveendran Sankaran

Calling an activity ‘sport’ should not prevent us from examining who controls it, who benefits from it and what it costs the child. | Photo Credit: ANI

Calling an activity ‘sport’ should not prevent us from examining who controls it, who benefits from it and what it costs the child. | Photo Credit: ANI

“Work while you work and play while you play.”

That was the line taught to many of us at school, and we lived by it. There was a time for study, a time for chores and a time, wonderfully unsupervised, for play.

As someone involved in sports administration and a former athlete, I increasingly wonder what happens when children’s play becomes an organised responsibility to produce results. The podium matters. But somewhere along the journey towards it, have we begun to lose sight of the child?

At conferences and workshops, I repeatedly hear expressions such as ‘talent identification’, ‘catch them young’ and ‘early specialisation versus diversification’. These phrases are spoken with conviction and usually with good intentions. We want to recognise ability, provide opportunities and help India compete successfully on the world stage.

I share that ambition. During my research into how India might win 36 medals at the 2036 Olympics, I began examining the pathways through which sporting excellence develops. That search led me to research on early specialisation, diversification and the organisation of performance-oriented youth sport.

It also brought me back to a more uncomfortable subject: the everyday lives of the children expected to fulfil our ambitions. When I look at children in our residential sports schools, particularly those between 12 and 16, I feel both hope and unease. I see opportunities that might otherwise have been unavailable to them. I also wonder how much of their childhood fits into the timetable.

Training, school, meals, recovery, competition and sleep can account for almost every hour. A well-organised day may appear reassuring to the adults responsible for it. From a child’s perspective, however, a day can be efficiently organised and still leave little room to choose anything. Where is the time to play a different game simply because friends are playing it? To sit with family without counting the hours before returning to camp? To be homesick without being told to become mentally stronger?

I do not assume that every residential programme creates these difficulties, or that every child experiences the same environment in the same way. These are questions we should investigate by listening to children rather than answering on their behalf. My concern is especially strong when I think about young girls living away from home. They deserve access to excellent coaching and ambitious sporting futures. Concern for their welfare must never become an excuse to restrict their opportunities.

File Photo: Raveendran Sankaran speaking at Sportstar Conclave in Patna.

File Photo: Raveendran Sankaran speaking at Sportstar Conclave in Patna. | Photo Credit: R V Moorthy

But opportunity carries responsibilities. Privacy, menstrual health, trusted adults, confidential support and safe ways to raise concerns must be integral to the programme. A girl should not have to choose between appearing committed to sport and speaking honestly about discomfort, fear or distress.

The same principle applies to every child: admission to an academy must not require surrendering the right to be heard. Research has helped me distinguish between ideas that are too often bundled together. Starting sport early is different from specialising exclusively at an early age. Enjoying regular coaching is different from training intensively throughout the year with little room for other activities.

A child can take up tennis, swimming or athletics at a young age and still experience a varied childhood. Learning seriously does not automatically require organising life around a single sporting outcome.

The International Olympic Committee’s consensus statement on youth athletic development cautions against premature specialisation and supports varied sporting experiences. It also recognises the complexity of development: growth, maturation, motivation and circumstances interact, making early predictions of future excellence uncertain. Its recommendations place sustainable participation and healthy development alongside sporting achievement.

A meta-analysis by Arne Güllich, Brooke Macnamara and David Hambrick, covering 6,096 athletes, offers another reason for patience. Adult world-class athletes generally had more experience across different sports and slower initial progress than national-class athletes. Higher-performing juniors showed a different pattern, including earlier starts and more practice in their main sport. These associations do not establish a universal formula, but they challenge the assumption that the quickest route to junior success is necessarily the best route to adult excellence.

We should resist replacing one rigid prescription with another. Sports differ, children differ, and circumstances differ. Diversification cannot guarantee a medal any more than early specialisation can. More fundamentally, children should not have to prove that play improves their future medal prospects before adults agree to protect it.

Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open, made this concern painfully personal for me. I was deeply moved by his account of growing up under relentless expectations and being sent away to a tennis academy. His admission, “I hate tennis”, unsettles the comfortable belief that outstanding achievement necessarily proves that the journey was right for the person who lived it. His experience at the academy began at 13.

Here is the point I want to make: Agassi is the success story. He won. The system worked, if success is defined by trophies. And yet the man who held those trophies tells us, in his own voice, that much of the journey was a misery he did not choose. If this is what success looks like, what must the stories of the thousands who did not succeed be like? They never get to write a bestselling autobiography. They simply disappear from the system, and we call it attrition.

One autobiography cannot represent every young athlete. Nevertheless, it should make us cautious about using a champion’s eventual success to justify everything that happened beforehand. We see the trophy. The athlete remembers the childhood.

Peter Donnelly’s work on children’s rights in high-performance sport sharpens this discomfort. In a passage reproduced by Christopher Matthews and colleagues, he draws attention to the language surrounding young athletes: they “work hard”, “work out”, have a “work rate” and carry a “workload”. His wider argument examines how children’s participation can acquire the demands and relationships associated with labour.

The point is not that every demanding practice session amounts to exploitation. It is that calling an activity ‘sport’ should not prevent us from examining who controls it, who benefits from it and what it costs the child. A child may love competing while disliking the conditions under which participation is organised. Adults need to recognise that distinction.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a clear framework for reflection. It recognises children’s rights to express their views, to education, to protection from violence, and to rest, leisure and play. Those rights remain relevant when a child is talented, selected or capable of winning.

For a family with limited means, a residential sports school may offer education, nutrition, accommodation and coaching that would otherwise be difficult to access. These are substantial benefits. They also make the institution’s responsibility greater.

A child who fears losing all those benefits may find it especially difficult to disagree. We must therefore look beyond the mere presence of a complaints mechanism. We need to know whether children trust it, understand it and can use it without fearing consequences.

This requires changes in how adults are evaluated. If coaches are judged almost entirely by medals, the pressure to prioritise immediate performance is built into their employment. If administrators are rewarded for the number of children selected, the quality of those children’s subsequent lives can disappear from view.

I would like to see institutions regularly examine whether children feel safe, whether their education is progressing, whether they have meaningful contact with their families and whether they still want to participate.

We should also follow the children who leave. Their experiences can reveal weaknesses that success stories conceal. A programme that produces a champion but leaves many others feeling discarded deserves a fuller assessment than its medal tally provides.

Coaches need the time, staffing and education to undertake this work. Expecting them to manage technical development, emotional distress, family difficulties and safeguarding concerns without appropriate support is unfair to them and unsafe for children.

Parents, too, need opportunities to reflect on the ambitions they bring into sport. A child’s ability can awaken hopes of recognition, financial security or a future that the family could never previously imagine. Those hopes are understandable. They become dangerous when the child feels responsible for making every sacrifice worthwhile.

As India pursues greater Olympic success, I want us to build excellent facilities, develop knowledgeable coaches and give talented youngsters opportunities worthy of their ability. I also want our ambitions to withstand scrutiny from the children living inside them.

Thirty-six medals in 2036 would be an extraordinary achievement. The preparation should leave us with stronger institutions and more young people who value sport, including those who never reach an Olympic team.

An important recommendation is to study the Indian context systematically. Much of the international evidence informing this debate comes from Western and other developed-nation systems.

We need data from our own residential sports schools: how children experience training and separation from home, what girls encounter, why injuries and dropouts occur, and what happens to those who leave the system. Their subsequent education, health, livelihoods and relationship with sport deserve attention alongside the achievements of those who remain.

These findings must reach policymakers in a language they can act on. Researchers and sports administrators should translate the evidence into clear recommendations on residential-school standards, training and recovery, support for girls, injury monitoring, and education and transition support for children leaving sport.

Each recommendation should identify the responsible institution, the resources required, a timetable and a way to assess progress. Studying our own system must lead to tangible changes in the lives of the children within it.

Published on Nov 04, 2026

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