Wrestlers provide late sparks as India scales a historic high

Sushil Kumar’s historic feat of winning back-to-back Olympic medals on the very last day here undoubtedly turned out to be the high point of the country’s campaign as the biggest-ever Indian contingent completed the 30th edition Games with a record haul of six medals.

The wrestlers provided the late sparks to the Indian campaign with Sushil’s silver medal in the 66kg category and bronze through Yogeshwar Dutt (60kg) that went a long way in overshadowing the flop show of some of the other star players.

In the end, India did live up to the expectation as six medals is something that was being spoken about by commentators when the contingent embarked for the Games. It was a far better show than the one gold and two bronze medals that India won at the Beijing Olympics four years ago.

Yet, there was a feeling that India may fall short of the target till the last two days of the Games when the wrestlers changed the script with their stunning display on the mat.

Sushil, a bronze medal winner in Beijing, emerged as the hero with his effort. For long, Indian sportspersons had been confined to mediocrity and were just making up the numbers in the Olympic Games and it was a refreshing change to see individual medals coming their way.

Abhinav Bindra’s gold medal in Beijing was a landmark and a real confidence booster four years ago.

Yogeshwar’s bronze medal was also a stupendous feat considering the fact that he bounced back brilliantly after losing his 60kg quarterfinal bout and worked his way to the bronze through the repechage stage. He showed tremendous stamina, skill and strength to overcome all odds.

Apart from the exploits of the wrestlers, shooter Vijay Kumar clinched the silver medal in the 25m Rapid Fire event, while five-time world women’s boxing champion M C Mary Kom, ace shuttler Saina Nehwal and rifle shooter Gagan Narang won bronze medals each.

But, there were disappointments galore and it came more from the star athletes who were said to have realistic chances of winning medals. But sadly, most of them flopped.

The big names like shooters Abhinav Bindra and Ronjan Sodhi, archer Deepika Kumari and Beijing bronze medallist boxer Vijender Singh returned empty handed. All of them were serious medal contenders.

The much-hyped men’s hockey players were the worst offenders as they lost all their six matches to finish 12th and last, the worst-ever performance in the history of the Games if one overlooks the country’s failure to even make it to the 2008 Olympics.

The archers too were major let-downs. They went into the Olympics with good form behind them and the men’s team had even qualified for the Olympics with a good show.

But when the moment came, they simply crumbled with none of them performing to potential. True, the windy, cold and cloudy conditions here did not suit them but then they had trained well taking into consideration all these factors.

A pre-competition bout of fever to the archers was attributed as the main reason for their poor show. Most of the archers trotted out that excuse after their events.

The lowest point in achery came when Deepika, the world number one, crashed out in the very first round of the women’s individual recurve. It was a shocker for the Indian camp.

Talking about shocks, nothing, however can be bigger than the bottom place finish of the men’s hockey team after losing 2-3 to South Africa in the 11-12 classification match.

Never in the history of Indian hockey has a team finished last in the Olympics, an 8th finish in the Atlanta Olympic Games being their worst show before the London debacle.

The Indian team lost all their group league matches, some of them quite badly, and it seemed that the gap with other international teams had widened over the last few weeks.

In the days to come, analysts and experts will come out with various reasons on why the Indian team failed but the bottomline is that the players were simply not good enough and what they dished out was absolute pedestrian stuff.

The embrarrasing result will also raise a debate on whether Australian Michael Nobbs, who had promised to revive Indian hockey, would be sent packing as the coach like so many of his predecessors — Jose Brasa, Gerhard Rach and Ric Charlesworth.

COMMENT NOW