How to win an Olympic Gold medal

If you love sports, you must be focused on the London Olympic Games and must have even caught the Olympic fever with the exploits of Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and others. We must thank the ancient Greeks (may God bless them again) for this and a whole lot of favours. From democracy, to medicine, philosophy, science, the arts to mathematics, commerce and Olympics. World nations, big and small have an arena to come together to show and celebrate their sporting prowess. Everyone wants to win an Olympic medal. Some countries win all medals while a huge majority does not. Why is it that way? Better still, how do you win an Olympic gold medal? One; natural dispositions – Some countries due to genetic and/or climatic conditions have a natural aptitude in some form of sport. Jamaicans and Americans seem to do very well in the sprints, whereas Kenyan (they have patented the 3000m steeplechase) and Ethiopians do better over the distance as the Chinese excel in indoor games, and Russians and Eastern Europeans in field events. There seems to be a niche for everyone and this could be due to a variety of factors. Two; Investment – during the cold war, competition was mainly between the United States and the USSR. These were the champions of the Western and the Eastern blocs, respectively. And it was no coincidence. These countries invested heavily in development of talent and sport (sometimes it is negative and results in doping). The economic rise of China seems to have directly correlated with her sporting upsurge. This dominance at the medals table is because of the investments these countries make in sport. If you don’t build swimming pools, you will not have a Michael Phelps to harvest the swimming medals. At best you will have Eric ‘the eel’ (who has the dubious distinction of setting the slowest qualifying time in swimming) simply because his choice to be in the Olympics was a ‘wild card’ – a matter of chance.Investment is the surest winning way if the medal tally by China and the US are anything to go by. The moral support from the home crowd is definitely a decisive factor in the brilliant performance of the host countries. We saw it in China’s Beijing performance; and we are seeing Britain post her best performance yet in London. Let the psychologists decipher the details but the motivation that comes with home ground advantage is enormous. If you look a bit closely at athletes from some countries you might notice that they look rather different from the rest of the citizenry (and might have names that are native to some place in East Africa). The particular countries in question are not cosmopolitan; they are, in fact very homogeneous. That takes us to the other method of winning an Olympic gold. Just buy a winner! This tends to be a quick fix and is not sustainable. But, hey, an Olympic medal is an Olympic medal.Inventing a new game and getting the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include it is another bulletproof way of getting on the medals table (there are games that some of us only see during Olympics). Then there are winter Olympics. May be we should invent savannah, desert and tropical games. Learning the Olympic sports at high school and university is like learning to be left handed in old age. Entrepreneurship (and indeed life), too, requires one to recognise their niche (an area where you excel with ease) early and develop from there; an investment of time, resources and effort; as well as support from ‘home crowd’ (family, friends, colleagues, suppliers) who identify with the cause. To succeed you must use methods similar to winning Olympic medals.As Pierre de Coubertin, the father of modern Olympic would say “L’important dans la vie ce n’est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l’essentiel ce n’est pas d’avoir vaincu mais de s’être bien battu”. (The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well). The most important lesson is in showing up.