India is a huge country with a lot of potential: Sergey Bubka

The Laureus Sports Awards were held in Monaco over the last two days and it saw quite a few reasons to cheer for the people watching back home in India. For the first time, an Indian was nominated for the Award. What's more, a Jharkhand-based NGO, Yuwa India, won the Sport For Good Award at the presitigious ceremony. Amidst all of the this, the dignitaries of the sporting world gathered at the award had perspectives to offer on the world of sport in general. Legendary Soviet-Ukranian Pole Vaulter was quizzed by The Hindu on whether or not he believes India would be capable of hosting the Olympics. Just a few months back, an official bid by India to host the 2032 Olympic Games was submitted. “India has the ability to host Olympics,” he was quoted as saying. “And if India does that, it would help its athletics too; after all it is the No.1 sport at the Olympics.” “India is a huge country with so much potential. If India could get good coaches, the country will succeed in producing more fine athletes," he was quoted as saying further adding that he feels Hima Das and Neeraj Chopra were tremendous talents in Indian and world athletics. Bubka was known for breaking established World records. In his own discipline of pole vault, he broke the World Record on 35 occasions- 14 out of those were occasions where he broke the record set by himself. He represented both the Soviet Union and Ukraine in various international medals winning an Olympic Gold in 1988 for the Soviet Union and bagging a combined 6 World Championship Golds playing for both flags. He is also the vice president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) currently- the world governing body for athletics. He is also an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee having been involved with it since 1996.