Simone Biles at Rio Olympics tells a tale-India needs daring innovators

The 19-year-old, 4’8” new Olympic gymnastics champion could not have put it better, “I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles.” But she must, inevitably, be compared to Nadia Comaneci, the legendary Romanian gymnast who became the first to score a perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, though Biles cannot beat or even equal that. Indeed, 10s have been discarded in favour of a complicated scoring system that takes into account several criteria. But not without good reason. For, it rained perfect 10s after Comaneci’s first one, with her notching up six more 10s at Montreal itself and her main rival, USSR’s Nellie Kim, bagging three, too.

In the following Olympics, nine (including Comaneci) scored 10s at Moscow, there were 44 at Los Angeles and 28 at Seoul. Perfection had become a given. At least those at the helm of gymnastics had the sense to realise that perfect 10s signalled a deadend.

If the goal remained perfect precision, gymnasts would have stop at that and not dared to innovate and evolve. That historic turn has produced a phenomenon like Biles. It is about time that those guiding India’s scholastic pursuits have a similar eureka moment given the astounding proliferation of perfect 100s in examinations. Do we need more perfectionists or more brilliant, daring innovators?