Respect to those who take a chance and compete

Vinayak has a lot of respect for competitors who stick their neck out and compete, despite the risk of failure and ridicule – Indian style.

It’s generally not considered advisable to fail at anything in India, especially not sports. If you come up short despite having given it your all, or even fall prey to dishonest tactics by your opponents, you’ll be smacked with metaphorical brickbats until your self-worth goes below rock-bottom… if you allow it to. I can say this from experience of dealing with my immediate and extended family through academic as well as mental health issues that were thankfully overcome the day I finally started to believe that tripping up and falling on your face is not always the end of the world.

Unrelated to this is my first experience of skiing, which didn’t go very well as I struggled to cope with the core strength required to do it properly. An elderly, short and bookworm-ish Indian civil servant went so far as to say, “this is not a sport for Indians.” Which only made me want to keep at it.

Pretty much anyone living here can relate to this in far more grounded spheres of life. From the attitude of parents, to micro-managing coaches and trainers, team owners, sponsors and even people whom you’ll randomly meet along the way. To this I would, with some sheepishness, also like to add the media. Most of us tend to get into this profession because we want to be around the activity that we weren’t able to get directly involved with. Having done this for almost ten years now, I can state that personally I’ve focused largely on facts – but opinion and a personal point of view colours my writing too.

Being given the “you’ve never done this yourself, so you don’t know what you’re talking about” argument is not easy as a motorsport journalist, but it’s helpful to find out which drivers and riders fall back on that argument more than others. More often than not, though, cold hard statistics determine a participants’ future anywhere. Although there are instances in which one needs to look beyond that (this is something very prevalent in motorsport) and encourage those who don’t fear failure.

No one in Indian motorsport has done this more so, in recent times, than Narain Karthikeyan, Gaurav Gill and CS Santosh. The three are genuinely talented exponents of three very different motorsport disciplines that come with their own set of challenges. And all three have repeatedly not shied away from leaving themselves open to criticism and scrutiny – Indian style – and even earned respect on the world stage by doing so.

Despite an extremely tough first outing at the Dakar Rally, which saw two big crashes and injuries that forced him to pull out of the event, I’m glad that Aravind KP has decided to follow Santosh’s example of going for it.

Experience is the greatest asset for an athlete, especially when it’s paired with talent, hard-work, diet, exercise, sound sports science, training, confidence, and a sense of entitlement – minus arrogance.

Being hard on one’s self is also extremely important, as you never grow if you don’t look inwards. But there’s a limit to everything – which means that you need to stop short of beating yourself up over failure and accept that life is a never-ending battle. Calling it quits, however, now that’s tough to do – unless you’re fired from a team or run out of money. But, even then, life goes on. Just be glad that you took a chance while everyone else just aired their opinions while watching your every move.