Amid much controversy, the 2016 Olympic Games are all set to begin in Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. From the Russian doping scandal to the report about the raw sewage in the waters off Rio, South America’s first Olympic Games have drawn a lot of media attention.

In Nepal, excitement has been building about a teenage girl who is going to be the youngest competitor among over 10,000 athletes competing at this year’s summer games. Gaurika Singh—aged 13, born in Nepal but based in Britain—will participate in the women’s 100m backstroke. She is among the six-member team representing Nepal in the 31st edition of the Olympiad.  

In almost every Olympics that Nepal has participated since our maiden appearance in 1964, only two taekwondo players—Sangina Baidya for Athens 2004 and Deepak Bista for Beijing 2008—have qualified for the quadrennial sporting spectacle. The rest of the Nepali Olympians have always banked on wild cards—the International Olympic Committee grants wild cards to the countries that fail to qualify in any event—so that they can be part of the Games. And even this time it is the same case.

To take a broader view, any country’s progress in the sporting arena can to a great extent be attributed to its prosperity, minus the success aided by doping. Soviet Union and East European countries through the 70s and 80s, and closer to home, South Korea and China, in recent decades are sterling examples of such success stories. Competitive sports can be hugely expensive and need great investments in infrastructure and human resources. Rarely are great athletes freak accidents.

Our failure to allot adequate resources in sports, such as sports infrastructure and athletes’ development which requires high performance coaches and a specialised training regime, has put Nepali players in a disadvantaged position. In terms of infrastructure, since the South Asian Games held in Nepal in 1999, no significant upgrades have been made in the existing sports structures.

Though Singh has brought much smile to Nepalis, the fact remains that Nepal has hardly made much contribution in honing her skills. To a large extent, she owes her success to her coach Rhys Gormley and the Copthall Swimming Club in Mill Hill area of north west London where she practices.

The reality of international sports today is an open secret: the talent is free; it is the training that costs and counts. This is why only the developed countries tend to rule the charts in almost all the international games. So for Nepali athletes to win medals in the Olympic Games is a long shot. We can shoot for medals at regional levels like the South Asian Games, for which the government should come up with a concrete plan to prioritise some key sports that we can achieve greater success in. Meanwhile, Singh will surely keep Nepalis glued to their TV sets and mobile phones regardless of whether she is a product of Nepal’s sporting heritage or not.