London Dreams – India’s quest for Gold

As I write this, we are less than 24 hours away from the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. As a sports enthusiast, I am excited. I am excited to see the world-class athletes competing against each other for the next 15 days across so many sporting events. With the Olympics being held in London, we in India get more Olympic footage because most of the events can be followed on TV post office hours. Beijing Olympics could not be followed so much on TV other than on weekends because office hours used to clash with the timings of the main events. Add to that, it is for the first time that a private broadcaster (ESPN) will be broadcasting the Olympics in India. Previously it was always used to be  Doordarshan and I must say the commentary and viewing quality was not that good but with ESPN we can be guaranteed a world-class viewing experience.

As a kid, I started following the Olympics from the year 1984 when it was held in Los Angeles. I remember the heartbreak that the entire nation went through when P.T. Usha missed out on a bronze medal by One-Hundredths of a Second in 400 Meters Hurdles. After this, 2 Olympics (1988 Seoul Olympics & 1992 Barcelona Olympics) went by with the Indian contingent getting no medals.

Things started to turn around from the 1996 Atlanta Games. After a long gap, India got a medal thanks to Leander Paes who won the Bronze medal in Tennis – singles event. Finally, we were visible in the medals tally first time after the 1980 Moscow Games. Sydney games in 2000 saw us winning one more medal – Karnam Malleswari winning a bronze medal in Weight Lifting. In the year 2004 when the games were held in Athens, India won a Silver Medal in Shooting – Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore bringing glory to India.

But India’s best performance happened in the 2008 Games held in Beijing. India won 3 medals including 1 Gold by Abhinav Bindra in Shooting. The Indian national anthem was played in the Olympics Medal Ceremony for the first time in 28 years thanks to this superlative effort from Abhinav Bindra. India won 2 Bronze medals as well, one in Boxing (Vijender Singh) and the second in weight lifting (Sushil Kumar – The Indian flag bearer for 2012 London Olympics).

The Beijing Olympics gave India hope and instilled a faith of belief that we can also compete among the best across various events and now the 2012 Games give us this opportunity to enhance our reputation further. The hope is high and there is this feeling inside that we will and we can do better than the 2008 Games. This hope comes from the fact that India has sent their biggest athletes contingent to the Olympics to date (81 to be exact) and will be participating in 13 different sports events for the first time. The performance and the results of many of the Indian participants have been world-class in the past couple of years. Be it Saina Nehwal in Badminton, Mary Kom in Boxing, Gagang Narang in Shooting, Deepika Kumari in Archery all have done exceedingly well in their individual events over the past 2-3 years and if they can keep this up for the next fortnight then India can have a Golden London Olympics.

Medal Hopefuls

This list is totally based on my prediction. The list is a very optimistic one and if we are lucky then it will be the best possible medal haul at the end of the next 2 weeks. Please note that India will be participating in 13 sporting events with 54 medals up for grabs.

Archery – 0
Athletics – 0
Badminton – 1
Boxing – 2
Hockey (Men) – 0
Judo – 0
Rowing – 0
Shooting – 2
Swimming – 0
Table Tennis – 0
Tennis – 0
Weight Lifting – 0
Wrestling – 1

Boxing and Shooting give us the biggest hope and I sincerely hope that India gets at least 5 medals in the 2012 London Olympics to make this year’s event the best ever for India.

Let the Games begin!

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