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COVER
STORY: OLYMPICS SPECIAL
Above
Pain Beyond Glory
The Olympic
Games are not just about victory. They are about the tragedy, the struggle
and the humanity of ordinary people. As Sydney prepares to host the greatest
show on earth, it is time to give sport's Everyman a hand.
by Rohit
Brijnath
Sometimes
the difference between what a man is and what he might have been is 0.13
second. Sometimes a man's entire life, his worth, the measure of his grief,
can be determined in 0.13 second. Forty years is a long time. Enough,
you'd think, for a man to have come to terms with that 0.13 second.
You'd think,
but what do you know?
Forty years
is nothing, too little, the clarity of a man's pain never diminishing.
"I can never forget it," says Milkha Singh, "till I die."
When the
1960 Rome Olympics beckoned, he was expected to win the 400 m. Gold, if
not silver, bronze at the very least. He is so sure he doesn't even run
the 200 m.
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For
athletes like Chinese diver Fu Mingxia, the Olympics is the ultimate
platform
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For the first
time the final is not run on the day of the heats, and he sits in his
room and "goes crazy thinking about the race". And then on the
biggest day of his life, he runs the worst race he could. First too fast,
then slowing down, then accelerating again, but it's no good. The finish
line has come and he's too late, 0.13 seconds too late, for bronze.
He is a
runner, it's what he is. As you sleep through the dawn, he's vomiting
while practising. It's insane, it is also uplifting. For he, and a thousand
before him and to come, invest their entire lives in just one race.
Imagine
then what happens to such a man when he fails.
"There
are days," says Milkha Singh, "even now when I just stop. And
then I cry."
The pictures
beamed to us from an Olympics are primarily of the shining teeth, the
stretched smiles, the corded, clenched fists of the triumphant warrior.
Faces that lie in the forefront of our memories, names that slip off our
tongues like a familiar friend. It is a deceptive picture, unable to encapsulate
the soul of the Olympics, the essence of the Games. For the truth is this,
of all the emotions that swirl through an Olympic arena, tragedy holds
predominance. Nearly 10,600 athletes will arrive in Sydney with suitcases
burdened with dreams, and 9,000 and more will win nothing.
Victory
by itself is impossible to predict; it means there is only one guarantee.
Failure.
But just
to taste that failure, to be that man 0.13 late for a bronze, is an honour
itself. Of the six billion people worldwide, only 10,000 are invited to
the Olympics. Each athlete then is one man in 600,000.
And to get
there is an incredible journey. The athlete delays marriage, he hocks
his car, he lives in dormitories soaked in sweat; his legs ache as if
amputated but there's still 30 km to run; every single day the demons
of pain and fatigue come visiting, telling him to forget it. And then,
sometimes, even God forgets to look his way.
A Tanzanian
runner, faceless, trains for the Games, running through the streets before
morning has broken. The police don't see an Olympic dream, they see a
thief running, they shoot him dead. Australian gymnast Andrei Kravastov
is luckier, he's alive. If you can call it that. Before the Atlanta Olympics
he tears his left Achilles' tendon. So he starts again, marking off the
calendar with black crosses till nearly four years have passed. And then
last month, during practice he hears it again. It's not possible, but
it is. His right Achilles' tendon has snapped.
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