India’S Performance On The 2016 Olympic Games In Rio

Rio 2016. Anticipation was at fever pitch as India sent her largest contingent ever – 117 athletes – to the Olympics. Unlike in the earlier Games, the 117 were fairly evenly split between male and female athletes – 63 men to 54 women. India came back with only two medals – both, it has to be mentioned, won by women – but it is the 130% spike in numbers among the female athletes, from 23 at London to a gobsmacking 54 at Rio (the number of male athletes had only gone up from 60 to 63), that tells the real story. For the first time since 1980, Ritu Rani’s girls – the women’s hockey team – had qualified for the Olympics, adding a healthy 16 to the contingent. And a much higher number of athletes than usual had earned the right, with spectacular timings, distances, and performances, to stand up and be counted among the greatest in the world. The ones who achieved the greatest sporting distinction of all – an Olympic medal – were P. V. Sindhu, who became the first Indian woman to win a silver at the Olympics (it could so easily have been gold, but doughty Carolina Marin had the measure of our Sindhu on the day), and wrestler Sakshi Malik, who won the wrestling bronze in the 58 kg category. But the girl who won the most hearts with her bravura performance a few minutes before midnight on the eve of India’s 70th Independence Day, when she leapt off the vaulting horse in a dangerous double-somersault, was Tripura’s Dipa Karmakar. Dipa missed the bronze by a whisker, but her countrymen, who had stayed up to watch her, weren’t complaining.

When Dipa returned to India with her coach, Bisweswar Nandi, and saw crowds of people outside the airport terminal, she began to fret. “We’ll never get home at this rate, Nandi Sir,” she said, “Seems like some VIP is expected. ” When she realised that the VIP the cheering crowd was waiting to greet was her, she was gobsmacked. “But I didn’t even win!” That little story illustrates another huge change in the Indian sports fan’s attitude to her team’s performance – like her country, she was now mature, and confident enough in her own skin to appreciate the achievement, not just the win. Her outlook was broader too – she did not line the streets only to greet the cricket team when they won the World Cup, she also turned up at the airport to sneak a peek at the girl who was the fourth-best gymnast in the world. The other thing that happened at Rio was that golf was reinstated as an Olympic sport. That in itself was not particularly exciting; what was, was that Indian teenager Aditi Ashok almost made the podium! Astounding things like that had now become par for the course in Indian sport. Right after the Summer Olympics came the Rio Paralympics, and another huge win. For the first time, India, which had sent its largest contingent of 19, won four medals – more than what our 117-strong contingent had won at the regular Olympics – at the Paralympics, two of them gold. Which was incredible, but what gave fans of women in sport even more to cheer about was the lone silver won by -Deepa Malik, who hurled the shot put to a distance of 4. 61m from her wheelchair, making her the first Indian woman para athlete to win a Paralympic medal. And so, two years later, to the Commonwealth Games of 2018. With a fabulous haul of 26 golds, India jumped two spots to end up at number three on the medals table, her best standing since Delhi 2010. Among the golds were a bunch of female shooters, including usual suspects (it must be said: it gives me serious goosebumps to use those words so casually) Tejaswini Sawant, twice gold-medal winner at the Commonwealth Games of 2006, and Heena Sidhu.

Oh, also, Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, and Vinesh Phogat did their thing, all of them ending up with golds. Ho-hum. But while ‘been there, done that’ had actually become a thing with some of our fine ladies, what was truly thrilling was to see a young guard emerge to carry on the fine work of their seniors. Young shooter Manu Bhaker, 16, won gold, while her teammate, Mehuli Ghosh, 17, won silver. 22-year-old paddler Manika Batra led the TT team to gold, while also winning the individual gold in the singles and silver in the doubles. And an 18-year-old from Assam called Hima Das not only made it to the last eight in the 400m, but also finished a very creditable 6th. The writing was on the wall – the sporting success of India’s girls wasn’t a flash in the pan. The village was in place, the juggernaut was on the move. Unless something went horribly wrong, our girls would only go from strength to strength. It was the kind of message that was entirely designed to warm the cockles of a long-time fan’s heart