Sporting fraternity needs to be grateful to Bindra: Geet Sethi

"Sporting identity of the country does not reflect from the media hype or the hype that an event generates but from the way its top athletes perform in the Olympics," Sethi said addressing a gathering at the India International Sports Summit here today. "The Sporting fraternity owes a huge gratitude to Abhinav Bindra. He has sub-consciously instilled the belief in us that yes we can do it.

"Whatever the country achieves in the Oympics later on, it was Bindra who started it all," he said. Bindra became the first Indian to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Sethi said there has been a positive change in how the government perceived sports as was evident with the increase in sports budget from Rs 150 crore in 1998 to over Rs 2,500 crore now.  However, Sethi said that government help was not alone for the development of sports in the country and the need of the hour was a public-private partnership.

"We need to come up with constructive public-private partnerships which can be useful to create stadia, train players etc. "We need to have more public-private partnerships so that the country can win not one but at least 20 gold medals by 2020," he said.