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SPORTS:
OLYMPICS SPECIAL
One
Billion Hopes
From being
sureshot contenders for gold, India's women lifters face an uphill battle
for medals
By Sharda
Ugra
The
Indian contingent travels to Sydney with a fistful of dreams and the hope
that this time they will not return empty handed
No more
the cushion of national titles, no more hiding behind subcontinental sweeps,
no more gloating over Asian Games medals. At the Olympic Games the Indian
sees himself, with sudden, frightening clarity, in relation to a vast,
unfathomable sporting universe. It is not a comfortable place. The Games
are where a battering ram tests the body, a mirror is held up to the mind
and a giant torch searches the soul. "At the Olympics," says
boxing coach B.A. Fernandez, "never mind two hands, you need three
to fight."
This week
72 Indians will set out for Sydney to discover the stuff they are made
of. For the first time in more than a decade, the team is brushed with
the awareness that among them are some who could return from Sydney with
more than the gift of experience and hindsight. There are a few-tennis'
awesome troublesome twosome, 16 on the hockey team and a couple of very
strong women-who could actually touch the sky. On a stage which demands
both poise and performance, they may be skating on thin ice but they are
all there in its bright dead centre.
It is time
to meet the team. Bhupathi-Paes, who turned away from each other when
the world was at their feet, have been startled into a reunion by the
distant gunshot of immortality. The women weightlifters try to shake off
controversies, lift weight, shed weight and take their sport to a wider
audience. It is a race against the clock which they could still win. The
16 redemption men on the hockey team, repeatedly humiliated by power-drunken,
megalomaniac masters, seek the moment when they move like one giant tidal
wave, flood the opposition defence and finally look their sporting forefathers
in the eye.
In this
season of plenty, there is more: Indian badminton has undergone a renaissance
after a player-revolt in 1997. The presence of two players in Olympic
competition is the result of long hours of grunt work come to fruition.
Men's champion Gopichand is a walking advertisement for a new brand of
Indian badminton: he combines all the grace of the Hyderabadi with a smouldering
competitive fire from an older, altogether different place.
The Indian
fight squad recognises that source itself. There used to be a time when
an Indian name in a boxing draw would draw a yawn. Twice on a recent training
tour to Cuba, heavyweight Gurcharan Singh found that his opponents had
failed to turn up. Two knockouts inside a minute on his last trip had
made quite an impact.
Three shooters-two
rifle, one trap-are quite at home on the range in international competition
but how they will stand up to the crush in the biggest event of all will
decide the calibre of their nerves and the course of their careers.
To the true
Olympians among the 72, the Games are about more than "taking part";
they are an opportunity to stretch further, push the limits of their skill
and endure pain they had once thought unendurable. The Indians may not
have the cash and the flash of the West, but their commitment and devotion
to their sport is as pure as spring water.
Swimmer
Nisha Millet stopped using the lift to her 10th floor apartment to put
in some extra endurance work after mind-numbing laps in the pool. Trap
shooter Anwar Sultan's family complains that he has grown silent and introspective.
He is concentrating on breathing, learning how much is too much when he
has to call, "Pull!" Boxer Jitender Kumar, a big baby-faced
middleweight with the reach of an octopus and the speed of a panther,
lost his beloved guru a month ago. He will fill the hole in his heart
with coach Hawa Singh's words: fight hard, fight well.
Right winger
Mukesh Kumar, discarded with six others like broken toys after winning
the Asian Games gold, has returned to hockey and its unrewarding sweat
with grace and humour that belong to 1950s movies. In some ways they are
all already heroic.
Ask them
what they get out of being athletes in a country besotted by cricket,
to now suddenly carry one billion hopes. The answer, spontaneous and utterly
baffling to a gimme-more generation, arrives in a multi-language chorus
before any talk of fame or money-it is a chance to show what we can do,
to win, to make our country proud. These are Indians who have risen above
their circumstances, forged by the white heat of contest, grown extraordinary
by their sport. Commit their stories to memory. Take a long, close look
at their faces. This is your team.
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