As India ventures to the 29th Olympics in Beijing, the biggest relief for the agonised sports fan is that there is no hockey team in the fray, to provide the false hopes.
India which had won eight hockey gold medals in the Olympics, has hit its nadir by failing to qualify for the Games, for the first time in history.
The last gold medal for India had come in 1980 in Moscow, in the Games that was depleted by the US-led boycott.
India has since managed to win three individual medals, one bronze each through tennis ace Leander Paes and lifter Karnam Malleshwari, and the silver in the last Games in Athens through double trap shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore.
Can the healthy progression lead to a gold medal this time? Hope springs eternal. Indian hopes spring yet again despite the absence of hockey team. The athletes responsible for kindling the hopes yet again are the same who have been fighting for national glory over the years.
Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have promised not to fight with each other off-court and instead fight together on court for a medal in tennis. Leander had missed the doubles medal with Ramesh Krishnan in Barcelona and with Mahesh in Athens. He is determined once again to make the medal happen, and is pacing himself up nicely for the Games.
Sania Mirza may not be able to whip her forehands with the same venom after a wrist surgery, but she fights her heart out when playing for the country, as we saw in the last Asian Games in Doha, when she won the individual silver, team silver and the mixed doubles gold.
The shooters, nine of them, have been training their sight on the Olympic medals for quite some time. They have two world champions in Abhinav Bindra and Manavjit Singh Sandhu apart from the Olympic silver medallist Rathore, to spearhead India’s challenge and possibly salvage some pride for the entire contingent of 57 athletes and 42 officials. Mansher Singh, Gagan Narang, Anjali Bhagwat and Samaresh Jung too are shooters of proven class, who can land a medal or two.
Anju George is the healthy face of Indian athletics and she continues to provide a glimmer of hope though she has not recently recorded anywhere near her career-best jump of 6.83 metres that she achieved in the Athens Games. Will she get that elusive Olympic medal, to add to her World Championship silver?
While Anju struggles with her form, the below par fare of the rest of the track and field athletes on the world stage compares poorly with their impressive personal best at home.
Can we trust the boxers, five of them, to deliver a medal, though the likes of Akhil Kumar in the 54 kg category, have been talking nothing less than the gold? Some of them have commendable wins over world class pugilists, like Vijender beating the ‘best boxer’ of the Athens Games, Bakhtiar Atrayev of Kazakhstan, but one swallow does not make a summer.
In the Olympics, every opponent is tough and every second in the ring counts. Ask Gurcharan Singh who missed a medal in the dying moments of a light heavyweight quarterfinal bout in the Sydney Games. The advantage in boxing is that if you make the semifinals you are ensured of a medal.
When it comes to hitting the target, the archers have been quite good, but the women’s team that has qualified did not inspire much this season with its performances in the World Cups. Dola Banerjee was a world beater last year when she won the gold in a World Cup. She has to re-enact the same magical form, especially in the hazy atmosphere of Beijing. It is a sport in which the wind can play havoc, and the hope is that it will be a friendly breeze for the Indians, for a change.
Mangal Singh Champia is like Limba Ram in the Barcelona Games. He is the “aaj ka Arjun” in the Indian squad. He had touched close to a world record score, and the hope once again would be to see him in his best form when it matters.
If the two badminton players, Anup Sridhar and Saina Nehwal, play their best and capitalise on the “favourable” draw, they would make the nation proud. A twisted ankle has been a cause of concern for Sridhar in the run-up to the Games, but the tall lad is capable of dooming the fortunes of some of the stars as he has done in the past. The young Saina, ranked 15 in the world, is full of energy, and bristling with confidence to make her presence felt.
In table tennis, Sharath Kamal has admirably carried on the good work of the past stars like Chetan Baboor. But it remains to be seen how well the Commonwealth Games champion tackles the best in the business to enhance the popularity of the game in the country.
Indian wrestlers — from K. D. Jadhav winning a bronze in 1952 to Subhash Verma finishing sixth in the heavyweight freestyle class in 1992 — have done the country proud over the years. The responsibility will be on Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt to put up a good show. They have not only been consistently doing well at the international level but have also been beating reputed opponents.
At 16 years, the youngest Indian swimmer to qualify for the Olympics, Virdhawal Khade exudes a lot of confidence. Will he be able to lift the Indian standards from the depths in the international arena? It may be too early to expect him to progress too far in Olympics, as he competes in the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle events to get a taste of real competition, but the signs are good that he would mature into a world class swimmer.
The judokas have been the butt of criticism over the years for losing their bouts in record time, within a few seconds. The onus will be on Khumujam Tombi Devi and Divya Tewar to provide a better image of the Indian fighting spirit, though they have not competed much in international events in the Olympic year.
In rowing, India was tipped to be a medal contender in this edition around eight years ago, but it would be a gigantic task for Bajrang Lal Thakar, Devender Khandwal and Manjeet Singh to live up to that early projection. We can always revise the target to 2016. The competition may be a lot more difficult for N. S. Johal as he sets sail in the heavyweight dinghy class in yachting.
From the days of two-time world champion Karnam Malleswari winning the bronze in Sydney — a mere 2.5kg away separated the gold and silver, when women’s weightlifting made its Olympic debut — to Kunjarani Devi finishing fourth with a 10kg margin behind the bronze in Athens, Indian weightlifting has lost its steam.
Pratima Kumari and Sanamacha Chanu failed the dope tests in Athens, shadowing the celebrations of the lone silver medal. It will be unfair to project a negative image on the lone lifter L. Monika Devi, but it will be a huge relief for every Indian fan if there is no ‘positive’ result in the testing. No medal is fine, but please do not fail the dope test.
The overall challenge will be to win two medals, and at least one gold. It is a long time that a country of one billion saw an Olympic gold. Let us go for it in Beijing!
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