An Indian contingent with over 120 sportrspersons is brimming with confidence as it undergoes the final phase of battle-readiness for the Paris Olympics.
After a century long wait, Paris will once again dazzle before a million spectators and close to three billion viewers as the Olympic flame burns at Stade- de- Frace from 26 July to 11 August. The city will no doubt pay obeisance to Pierre de Coubertin, a French visionary who revived the Olympic Games in 1896 after the ancient Olympics ended in 393 A.D. in Olympia, Greece.
There isn’t a sporting spectacle more magnificent and awe-inspiring than the modern Olympics and there isn’t a city as glamourous as Paris, as the venue chosen by the IOC for the grand show.
The opening ceremony promises to be cinematic spectacle as a flotilla of boats will carry the participating athletes down the river Saine in the backdrop of the setting sun. In a bold departure from the traditional ceremony conducted inside the grand stadiums for a finite crowd, the Paris Olympics Organizing Committee decided to showcase the event before hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering the athletes and the three thousand dancers from either side of river Saine.
It may sound incredulous but the long-distance swimming event in the previous Olympics in Paris in 1924, was conducted in the pristine waters of Saine. In what may seem a valiant bid to create history, the world’s most romanticized river is undergoing a 1.4 billion USD makeover to make it ready for triathlon and marathon events of the Olympiad, leaving a lasting legacy for the Parisians. To the skeptics, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emmanuel Macron have both promised to take a dip in the revitalized river before the summer Games begin!!
Winning an Olympic medal is an athletes’ most revered dream and failure to qualify to participate in the Games his/her worst nightmare.
The qualification process and criteria set out by the IOC ensures that the world’s best athletes get to participate in the Games without bias. The event calendar reckoned for qualification spreads over a year. The final quarter April- June 2024 witnessed tenacious attempts with athletes traversing thousands of miles every week over time zones and extreme weather condition to earn a spot in the Games.
The qualification process having ended on 25 June, it is now official that close to a hundred and twenty Indian athletes have met the benchmark and earned the honour of representing their country.
Apart from the anticipated list of athletics, badminton, wrestling, shooting, boxing and Men’s Hockey, players have done well to earn representation in Weightlifting, Men’s and Women’s teams in Table Tennis, Golf, Judo, Sailing, Rowing, Archery, Equestrian (dressage). This is a good commentary on Indian sport as new vistas are opening.
Any account of India’s Olympic quest next month should begin with a salute to the steely determination of India’s greatest weight lifter, Mirabai Chanu. After having won a silver medal in Tokyo Olympics, she has vowed to ‘give it her all’ at the Paris Games. From lifting firewood as a kid in her village in Imphal, to becoming a World Champion, a CWG Gold medalist and hopefully, an Olympic double, her journey of life will be a testimony of grit and sacrifice that few can match.
Given India’s emotional connect with Men’s Hockey and its rich heritage built during 1928- 1964 with intense rivalry with its neighbor, the medal that matters most to an Indian is the Hockey Gold. Men’s hockey team won a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics after a gap of 41 years and is now drawn in the tougher Pool B along with Title holders Belgium and Australia. Progress of the team led by Captain Harmanpreet Singh and Coach Craig Fulton will be watched by millions back home with a prayer for every penalty corner earned.
Indian athletics has been on a steady upswing in recent years with its historic medal tally in the 2023 Asian Games. The flamboyant Neeraj Chopra could well create history in Paris by adding another Olympic medal to the Gold he won in Tokyo. As a mark of revival of the sport, 32 athletes have bettered the Olympic qualification and sealed their participation in the Games. Heartwarming results came from the 4#400 relay teams in athletics which qualified with superb timings in the World Relay Championship held in Bahamas in April this year. There was a heartbreak as well; Murali Sreeshankar, India’s ace long jumper, having qualified with great distinction in Diamond League, suffered a knee injury that rules him out for the entire year.
One hopes that the two 4#400 Relay teams that qualified in the Bahamas with impressive timings will feature in the finals of the event. Though not a podium finish, creditable performance can be expected from Avinash Sable and Parul Chaudhary in their respective 3000M steeplechase events.
Expect happy tidings from the boxing arena where the Indian boxing contingent of 6 including 4 women will ‘put their best hook forward’. Lovlina Borgohain in 75 Kg and Nikhat Zareen in 50Kg are reigning world champions and with Chef de Mission Mary Kom cheering them on from the stands, every Indian will pray for podium finish for both.
Indian badminton hit its purple patch going into the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010 and hasn’t since looked back. It has been amongst medals in all three previous Olympics; all coming in Women Singles with Saina Nehwal’s in 2012 in London followed by a Silver and a Bronze from PV Sindhu in Rio 2016 and Tokyo, 2021. Sindhu’s current form has been a cause for some anxiety but her training team is working hard and has now been joined by the legendary Prakash Padukone as her mentor. Indians can reasonably hope for a medal in Men’s Doubles from the pair of Satwik-Chirag who have maintained a steady rise in their world ranking. A possible podium finish in Men’s singles for H.S. Prannoy or Lakshya Sen, who have earned the tag of giant killers in several world level tournaments, could be the icing on badminton cake.
Rumblings in the Wrestling Federation of India over the past year appear to have taken a toll on the sport with only 6 wrestlers qualifying for the Games. Female wrestlers have cut their male counterparts to size with 5 qualifications to the lone Aman Sehrawat left in the fray in 57 Kg weight category. Tokyo had produced a Silver and a Bronze in two weight categories of Men.
India’s shooting squad comprising of 19 shooters with entries in Pistol, Rifle and Trap & Skeet is the other large component of the Indian contingent.
Shooting has been a rewarding event for India ever since Col Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, AVSM shot to fame in Athens 2004 with a silver medal in Double Trap event. Four years later, Abhinav Bindra created history bringing home India’s first ever Gold in an individual sport (10 M Air rifle) and inspiring a whole new generation of shooters. After a bronze by Gagan Narang in London Olympics in 2012, the sport failed to win a medal in two successive Olympics. The performance of the 15 strong shooting squad in Tokyo was particularly disappointing as it drew a blank.
One hopes that the Paris Olympics will provide redemption. The 19 strong squad selected for Paris includes the mercurial Manu Bhaker, who is back with renewed determination in the 25M air pistol event. Shooters have been training in the high -performance center at Volmerange-Les-Mines, France along with specialist foreign coaches for each event. It is a make or break bid for the shooting squad which appears to be in good form and battle ready.
India’s creditable medal tally of 7 medals in Tokyo Olympics came from Athletics (Gold), Men Hockey (bronze), Weight lifting (silver), Wrestling Men (silver and bronze) Badminton (bronze) boxing (bronze).
National Sports Federations, with support from the Government and sports foundations like JSW, Reliance, Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) have done the wise thing by sending their athletes and coaches for the intense pre-competition training at Olympic Training Centers overseas. Training in this phase is most crucial that requires specialized equipment and expertise available in these global centers. The P.T. Usha led Indian Olympic Association (IOA) has a challenge on hand to outshine Tokyo performance and register a better ranking for India in the final medal table.
Since its inception, Olympic Games have witnessed some unbelievable feats. As the Games of 23rd Olympiad begin in Paris in less than a month, memory of Paavo Nurmi, known as the flying Fin, comes alive. Exactly a century ago, in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, his feat of winning 5 Gold medals in 6 days in events ranging from 1500m, 3000 steeple chase, 5000m and two cross country races remains indelible in athletics history. When French authorities barred him from competing in any further event, he ran the 10000m race outside the stadium and clocked a time better than the official Gold Medal winner!!
The five rings of the Olympic Games symbolize the union of five continents and the Olympic flame announces a message of peace and friendship; brotherhood and amity between people of the five continents. It is a great irony of our times that as the Olympic torch heads towards Paris, barely 3000 km south of the Olympic city, in a dessert strip of land, dozens of shelter homes are being destroyed and children killed in mindless savagery that has gone on for over 6 months.
The Olympic anthem, the oldest intellectual property of the Games, was written by the Greek poet Kostis Palamas for the glory of the Games. The IOC will do well to tweak the words to embrace John Lennon’s noble thoughts: ‘Imagine there’ no countries, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too; Imagine all the people livin’ life in peace…….’
Afterall, there is no bigger stage for a call for amity than the Olympic Games.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
V K Verma is a former President, Badminton Association of India and a former Commercial Director, Air India.
