India at Beijing Olympics

One Gold, Two Bronze And A Lot Of Disappointments

I feel another great country India has not been able to focus on realizing the potential of their sportspersons. I am a firm believer that India have the potential to do much better than the three medals at Beijing — which I hear from some friends is one of their best Olympics results.

A medal changes so many things. And this time we are talking of medals. Journalists from other countries want to know more about Abhinav Bindra and Vijender Kumar. They ask you whether
Sushil Kumar has got a job. All kinds of questions; questions even you and I would want answers to.

Back home, these little known faces of Indian sport have overnight become household names. Their stories
are being told again and again while politicians are rushing in to annou nce awards. Everyone wants to be on this bandwagon. Three medals in one Olympic Games is something no Indian dreamed of. Of course, claims were made like they always are every four years. Some officials, as expected, are moving around with that “I told you so” expression on their faces. But the fact is most Indians have been surprised or even stunned, while some are already talking of a paradigm shift.

Beijing could well become a plank to build for the future. It has given hope. It could change
mindsets of people who cannot see beyond cricket, it could see more children playing sports in our fields which are slowly being devoured by the builder mafia in cities across the country. But that’s in the unknown future, as in our country devoid of a sporting culture it is difficult to hope for a discernible change in a short period of time.
Today is the time to be realistic and assess the performance of the 56-member Indian contingent, which
completed its assignment on Friday night. The maximum hopes this time were from the shooters. Given the
performances in the past two years in the World Cups and World Championship, the feeling was that more than one medal was a possibility. Only one medal happened and it went to the man who moved away from the system and trained alone, on his own. He did get monetary support from the government, but Bindra decided to plan his own journey.

Bindra’s gold is then a huge gain and the second consecutive medal in shooting should give the sport even
more prominence and support in coming days.

However, the sport which made the maximum impact for the country is boxing. Three out of five boxers in the quarterfinals was simply unexpected. All three fought bravely, though only one won a medal. Indian boxers have been accused of lacking the killer instinct in the past. This time, they were surprisingly aggressive and willing to take on the big names. This performance should force the government to take boxing more seriously.

As the focus shifted from shooting to boxing midway through the Games, wrestling gate-crashed into national consciousness — Sushil Kumar had decided to enjoy his day in the sun. Wrestling was a sport which was not expected to give us medals. Sushil’s bronze was a bonus that somehow made the Olympic experience richer, and made one wiser. Saina Nehwal also gave reasons to celebrate. She became the first Indian to enter the singles quarters. She almost got past her Indonesian opponent in the quarters. She is the future star of Indian sports.
One sport which promised a lot but disappointed was tennis. Sania Mirza pulled out due to injury in singles

while the experienced duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi ran into an inspired and angry Roger Federer.
That was it.
Archery was a huge disappointment. The performance of the Indians in recent times had suggested that they
should have at least gone into the finals of their events. They were just not there.
But the biggest disappointment was athletics. Anju Bobby George could not have one clean jump against her
name while the runners and throwers were way off their personal bests. They were here to just make up the
numbers as were some of the others.
GOOD
Rifle shooter Abhinav Bindra, wrestler Sushil Kumar, boxer Vijender Kumar helped India to her best ever show in Olympics. Also impressive were badminton star Saina Nehwal and boxers Akhil Kumar and Jitender Kumar as they finished tantalisingly close to winning a medal.
BAD
Surendra Singh and Preeja Sreedharan, the only two athletes who managed to come near their best show, won
a place in the bad list. Others who fall in this class include the archers, the other two wrestlers, two swimmers, the table tennis duo and shooters Gagan Narang and Mansher Singh.
UGLY
Those who had a nightmarish outing in Beijing were the rest of the athletes including Anju B George, the tennis trio of Leander, Mahesh and Sania, shooters Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Anjali Bhagwat, Avneet Kaur and the two judokas.

I still feel this is only the beginning and there is more to come if only they set up a system which suits the country — it need not be like the Chinese, American or European but a system that suits India.

While China continue their march to the top; it is the Americans who will have to do a lot of soul searching.