The auditorium was lit with the passion of more than a dozen young girls gathered for the launch of the Girls for Gold program in Bengaluru.
Their eyes sparkled with excitement and determination as they admired the sports champions – including former national table tennis champion B Bhuvaneswari and boxing champion MC Mary Kom – who were present at the inauguration.
Her body language conveyed her dream of winning gold medals and bringing glory to her country.
The Girls for Gold program is a joint initiative of the Infosys Foundation and the GoSports Foundation that aims to build a holistic ecosystem for young and aspiring female athletes between the ages of 13 and 19 across five sports – shooting, boxing, weightlifting, table tennis and badminton.
“The Girls for Gold program’s holistic model builds the ecosystem by investing in human and institutional capacity and creating talent pathways for future generations,” said Deepthi Bopaiah, CEO of the GoSports Foundation.
“We are confident that this unique program will impact the lives and careers of the women athletes we will support and Indian sport more broadly.”
Bopaiah explained that out of 18 sports, only five sports were chosen because the champions in those specific fields had already established academies and there was a discrepancy in the number of players who won medals in those sports.
The GoSports organization intends to add more sports in later stages of the program.
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Towards a systemic change in sport
After three months of research and intensive fieldwork, five academies were accepted into the program. These are Lakshya Shooting Club in Mumbai, Mary Kom Regional Boxing Foundation in Imphal, Sathish Sivalingam Weightlifting Foundation in Vellore, Raman TT High-Performance Center in Chennai and Yadav Pro Badminton Academy in Bengaluru.
Most of these academies started out as passion projects, but they lacked infrastructure and funding. Therefore, the Go for Gold program provides athletes with training, financial aid, and other necessary interventions. It will also focus on continuing education for trainers through certification programs and providing academies with the necessary infrastructure.
“Through his program, we seek to bring about systemic change in the sporting arena by bringing a 360-degree focus to all aspects, which includes athlete selection, building a pipeline of skilled and capable coaches, athlete nutritional balance, physical therapy and technical equipment of the identified academies to improve the training process,” said Sumit Virmani, trustee of the Infosys Foundation.
Virmani called the technology “a crucial part” of the sport, noting that the program includes video analytics and other AI-based tools to help athletes focus on the finer aspects of their game and give them a more detailed understanding of their performance and of their areas to convey improvement.
Speaking of her struggles as an athlete and winner of six world championships, Mary Kom said, “When I started playing, infrastructure and facilities didn’t exist. Women’s boxing wasn’t even considered a sport. However, I’ve fought all of those beliefs to get where I am.”
She believes athletes today have more access to training and better facilities.
Kom also sees it as its responsibility to encourage more women to take up sport. However, she acknowledges that this requires a collective effort and cannot be achieved alone.
“I’m excited to be a part of this program because together it allows us to unleash the athlete in these girls,” she said.
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Kom advised the young athletes at the event to stay humble. She said: “I’m a daughter, a wife, a mother, but above all I’m a woman who comes from humble backgrounds and that has always kept me the same no matter how many medals I win.”
GoSports’ Bopaiah believes that despite a gradual increase in women’s participation in sports, there is still a long way to go.
The life of an athlete with that of a “tapas‘ Sudha Murty, an educator and author, encouraged young girls by saying, ‘The road ahead will be full of thorns, hard work and lost battles, but all of this will one day lead you to win wars.’
