Deepthi Bopaiah, the CEO of GoSports Foundation, believes that India is lagging behind in its preparation for the 2036 Olympics, which it has bid to be a host for. While speaking at the Rising Bharat Summit in New Delhi on Wednesday, she argued that the country’s system is currently too focused on the elite athletes — or ‘role models’ — and needs to start nurturing mid-level and young, upcoming talents. India has sent a letter of intent to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), expressing interest in hosting the 2036 Olympics for the first time ever. Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Poland, Egypt, and South Korea are among other countries vying for the privilege. The International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Future Host Commission will put the competitors through a rigorous selection process. “If you look at 2036, we are not too far away,” Bopaiah said at the CNN-News18 event. “We should have started work already. When you look at the number of events India actually participates in at the Olympics or the Paralympics, out of the 33-34 events, we participate in only 13 or 14. So, out of the few events we participate in, events like athletics, cycling and fencing, which have so many medals at stake, we don’t even send people into those events. So, if we have to host the Olympics, we have to look at the sports, the events we are good at go really deep into it, into the grassroots… It’s not our current set of athletes, it’s much younger athletes we need to be working on,” she added. Bopaiah was speaking alongside Olympic Champion Abhinav Bindra and double-Olympian Aparna Popat. She said India has gained everything it had to by focussing on the elite because there are enough role-models to look forward to in many sports, adding that it was now about helping young athletes reach that level. “I think our system currently is focussing on the elite, on the top, it was important for India to show that it was possible,” she said. “Abhinav did that beautifully when we believed that we could not win an individual gold medal. He showed that it’s possible. For all different countries, you need to show that there’s hope. So when you look at elite athletes, you have to show that it’s possible. We have built that model really well where you have role models in many sports.” “But when you go deeper into every sport, you notice that you don’t have the middle or junior athletes. So I think we need to flip the model a bit, while we focus on the elite, also keep going down the pyramid and show that the sport doesn’t sit out of our general world. Atheletes are going to come from people who move and have physical activity and then elite sport happens. It just doesn’t going to come out of somewhere!” Bopaiah added.