The Olympic Games has always been the pinnacle of an athlete’s career. From extremely rigorous training sessions to strict food and sleep schedules, an athlete sacrifices their entire lifestyle for the biggest of stages. All of this, despite knowing that all it takes is a second’s slip up to bring their dream of an Olympic medal crashing down. In fact, situations like these demand the athletes to match their physical fitness with equal amount of mental fitness.
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Throughout the course of Olympic history, India has had several unfortunate instances of its athletes narrowly missing out on an Olympic medal. We take a look at some of the athletes who missed out on the medal by a whisker.
Milkha Singh (1960 Rome Olympics)
“The Flying Sikh” who had created a record by winning gold in the 400m category of the Commonwealth Games, went into the 1960 Rome Olympics as the obvious favourite to win India a medal. In the six-man 400m final, Singh got off to a good start by taking the lead in the early stages of the race. Almost 250m into the race, Singh committed the mistake of slowing down in the belief that his pace could not be sustained and looking around at his fellow competitors.
This presented the opportunity for Davis, Kaufmann and Spence to pass him and finally resulted in a photo-finish. Singh lost to bronze medallist Spence by the smallest of margins. Spence clocked 45.50 seconds, while Milkha Singh registered a timing of 45.60 seconds losing by a margin of just 0.1 seconds.
PT Usha (1984 Los Angeles Olympics)
PT Usha, who was popularly called the Payyoli Express went into the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles on the back of some great form. She was the Asian record holder and had won silver at both the 100 and the 200m events at the Asian Games in 1982 in New Delhi. Unfortunately, she suffered heartbreak in the 400m hurdle event.
After what was an impressive qualifying performance, Usha failed to secure the medal in the final by just a difference of 0.01 seconds. Morocco’s Nawal El Moutawakel and USA’s Judy Brown secured gold and silver respectively while the bronze medal went to Romania’s Cristieana Cojocaru who registered a timing of 55.41 seconds to Usha’s timing of 55.42 seconds in what was a thrilling photo-finish.
Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi (2004 Athens Olympics)
The iconic pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi came close to winning the bronze medal in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. In the first round in Athens, the Indian pair, seeded fifth, got the better of America’s Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish to win 7-6(5), 6-3. It was in the second round that they put up one of their greatest performances to defeat Switzerland’s Yves Allegro and Roger Federer 6-2, 7-6(7). In the quarterfinals they breezed past Zimbabwe’s Wayne Black and Kevin Ullyett, winning 6-4, 6-4.
Their victorious run for an Olympic medal suffered a major setback in the semis as they lost 2-6, 3-6 to the German pair of Nicolas Kiefer and Rainer Schuttler. In their bronze medal clash against Croatia’s Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic the Indian pair fought extremely hard in what ended up being a thriller of a match. In a test of extreme mental fitness, the Indian pair broke first and ended up losing the match 7-6(5), 4-6, 16-14.
Dipa Karmakar (2016 Rio Olympics)
Dipa Karmakar who was India’s first female gymnast to Qualify for the Olympic Games made quite an impact during her Olympic debut. Despite her impressive campaign, the gymnast from Tripura, unfortunately, missed out on securing an Olympic medal by the barest of margins in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
The Indian athlete achieved a score of 14.833 to qualify for the finals of the vault event. Unfortunately, she missed out on a bronze medal by just 0.15 points finishing in fourth place. Karmakar is only the fifth woman in gymnastics history to land the Produnova vault, one of the hardest vault performed in women’s artistic gymnastics
Abhinav Bindra (2016 Rio Olympics)
Abhinav Bindra who created history by becoming India’s first-ever individual Olympic gold winner, came within touching distance of another medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Bindra who had won gold in the shooting’s men’s 10m air rifle event at Beijing, had a slow start in Rio, finishing seventh in the qualifying rounds out of eight available places.
But in the final, he brought out a much better performance, in what was a heavily fought match. Unfortunately, Bindra took fourth with 163.8 after losing a shoot-off with Serihy Kulish of Ukraine after the pair exited the seventh round tied. He missed a bronze medal by just a tenth of a point. Despite the heart-breaking loss, Bindra has said that Rio 2016 was the Olympics in which he was most satisfied with his performance.
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