1 month ago
15
India’s Paris 2024 campaign was a mixed bag in terms of performance — a paradox of some of the cruelest finishes and yet some very encouraging signs found in finishes that didn’t secure medals, but made Indian sports history. read more
 "The paradox of India's cruelest yet most encouraging Olympic outing")
India won six medals at Paris Olympics 2024 and had six fourth-place finishes. AP/Reuters
Are we happy with the six medals that the Indian contingent won at the Paris Olympics this time? Yes. But are we fully satisfied with that number? Probably not.
Having said that, make no mistake about it - the participating athletes gave it their all and there is of course a lot to celebrate. However, one can’t really shake off the feeling that India could have notched up a double-digit number of medals this time in Paris. And they almost did.
There is of course a lot being written and spoken about how an unprecedented number of fourth place finishes is tragic and heartbreaking. But let’s try and be a little more objective here.
Paris 2024 was an edition that was both the cruelest and at the same time the most encouraging for India. It is a strange paradox, no doubt, but if you scratch the surface of India’s overall campaign, the paradox explains itself. Multiple athletes and therefore by extension their sporting disciplines were also not really up to the mark and there is definite room for improvement there.
India’s biggest lessons from Paris Olympics: Mental conditioning and long-term planning
The Olympics is the biggest sporting stage of them all and it is a well-established fact that overall sporting prowess has a direct correlation with a nation’s overall economic and civilizational development. There’s a reason why countries like the USA and China consistently dominate Olympic Games medals tallies. But over the years, India too has been channelling more and more money and resources to lift overall performances at the Games and produce more medal winners, both in terms of schemes and direct expenditure on coaching resources, infrastructure, athlete training, etc.
According to media reports, the Indian Sports Ministry spent close to Rs 80 crore on athletes who secured qualification across 16 different sports disciplines at the Paris Olympics.
Historically one of the big improvements for India at the Olympics was the fact that the country began to win multiple medals in single editions from the 2008, Beijing Games onwards - a big change from the time India initially began participating at the Olympics when the country usually picked up only one medal per edition, first as a British colony (from 1900 to 1936, though in 1900 Norman Pritchard won two silver medals for British India) and then as an independent nation (from 1948, London Games onwards, though in 1952 India won two medals). Also, in the 1900 to 2004 modern Olympics era, a majority of India’s medals were won in men’s field hockey (11). There were only six non-hockey medals won in this period - Norman Pritchard’s two silvers in athletics (for British India), KD Jadhav’s wrestling bronze in 1952, Leander Paes’ bronze in men’s singles tennis in 1996, Karnam Malleswari’s weightlifting bronze in 2000 and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silver in men’s double trap shooting in 2004.
India at Paris Olympics: Haryana, with 2% of the population, clinched 66.66% of the medals
In 2008, India won three medals for the first time at the Olympics and this marked a watershed moment for Indian sport. For the first time ever, India had an individual Olympic gold medallist in Abhinav Bindra who made sure India won back-to-back shooting medals at the Games (after Rathore’s silver in Athens, 2004). Vijender Singh and Sushil Kumar became overnight sporting icons and poster boys of their respective sports.
Then in 2012, jackpot. India doubled their medal count at the London Games vis a vis Beijing, winning as many as six medals. Vijay Kumar (silver) and Gagan Narang (bronze) kept the Indian shooting flag flying high, while Sushil became a double Olympic medallist with his silver and Yogeshwar Dutt’s bronze made it two wrestling medals for the first time ever in a single edition of the Games for India. Saina Nehwal (badminton) and MC Mary Kom (boxing) won bronze medals but became golden girls of Indian sport. And the country began to believe. After decades of only the men’s hockey team winning medals and then a barren run from the 1984 to the 1992 editions (no medals), Indian athletes were winning multiple medals, across different sporting disciplines at the Olympics - it was a clear sign of how much sports like shooting, badminton, boxing and wrestling were improving in the country.
This is why the 2016 Games were a big disappointment. Only two Indian athletes won medals - PV Sindhu (silver) and Sakshi Malik (bronze). The count was abysmally low, but it was chalked down to being an aberration.
And that theory was further strengthened when India roared to as many as seven medals in the next edition in Tokyo - a new record for the country and overall, the most successful outing of all time, with two historic medals won in men’s javelin and men’s field hockey, along with medals in weightlifting, wrestling, badminton and boxing. What Neeraj in particular did was mind-boggling. Not too many people would have bet on an Indian athlete winning the gold in men’s javelin. But that happened and another new sport was added to the list of sports Indian fans expected medals from.
So, logic dictates that with 117 athletes in the final contingent at Paris, just two less than the 119 at Tokyo last time, despite the entire Indian women’s hockey team missing, a double-digit number of medals was what was expected. Not just by the fans, but also by people in the Indian sporting fraternity. But fate, pressure, and some below-par performances combined to ensure that that didn’t happen.
Olympic pressure. Now, this is a very, very real thing and every athlete feels it. It’s just that different athletes respond to pressure in different ways. Some are more focussed under pressure, while others crumble.
In Paris this time, India had the maximum number of fourth-place finishes ever at a single edition of the Games - six. A fourth-place finish is hands down the cruelest in sport. You are so close to being on the podium, knowing full well that there was maybe just the minutest of differences between you and the athlete who won bronze and on a different day it could have been you on the podium. It’s a feeling that stays with most athletes forever. India, of course, have had many famous fourth-place finishes at the Olympics in the past - from the men’s football team in 1956, to Milkha Singh in 1960, to PT Usha in 1984, to Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in 2004, to Joydeep Karmakar in 2012, to Abhinav Bindra and Dipa Karmakar in 2016, the women’s hockey team in Tokyo last time.
Olympics: India’s fourth-place finishes at the Summer Games
But six fourth-place finishes at a single edition of the Games is a mind-boggling number and there’s no doubt that Olympic pressure was at play here.
But the flip side of that coin is actually a very encouraging story - The fact that India have never had as many as six fourth-place finishes also means that, across disciplines, so many Indian athletes have never got so close to winning a medal at a single edition of the Olympics in the past. Yes, six more bronze medals would have meant a total of twelve medals, a big double-digit number, but this also shows that apart from the six medals that were won, India were almost good enough to win six more. Now, what needs to be looked at is how to go from almost good enough to good enough and higher in Los Angeles in four years, without losing the momentum that was built up in Paris.
Let’s take a closer look at the six fourth-place finishes that India had in Paris:
Arjun Babuta missed the bronze in the men’s 10m Air Rifle event by a whisker (1.4 points behind the eventual bronze medallist at the time of elimination). He qualified seventh and then maintained second place in the elimination rounds of the final, but then dropped just outside medal contention. At the 2023 Asian Shooting Championships he won the silver medal in his event, thereby securing a quota place for India. Though India had sent an unprecedented number of shooters to Paris, thanks to the quota places won (21), Arjun wasn’t being talked about as a medal favourite. The fact that he finished fourth bodes very well, both for him and Indian shooting.
Manu Bhaker missed a third medal in Paris in her last event - the women’s 25m pistol, finishing fourth. But she also became the first Indian female shooter to qualify for three finals in one edition of the Games. Her elimination in this event was in a nail-biting shoot-off.
Archers Dhiraj Bommadevara and Ankita Bhakat came within touching distance of winning India’s first Olympic medal in archery in the mixed team event. They finished fourth after losing to an American mixed team pair in the bronze medal match. But they also became the first Indian archers ever to reach a medal round at the Olympics.
India at Tokyo 2020 vs Paris 2024: What changed from seven medals to six
Shuttler Lakshya Sen was up against the defending champion Viktor Axelsen in the men’s singles semi-final and was up 17-11 in the first game and then he had three game points, but made an unforced error off his serve and eventually lost the game 20-22. In the second game, he went up 7-0, but then lost it 21-14. Olympic pressure and nerves got the better of Sen here, but he showcased some extraordinary skills, just like he did in his quarter-final win against Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien Chen and before that against Indonesia’s Jonatan Christie.
In the bronze medal match against Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia, Sen won the first game, but then conceded as many as eight straight points to lose the second and eventually went down 21-13, 16-21, 11-21. These results showed two things very clearly - one - that Lakshya Sen is of course supremely talented and can give the best in the business a run for their money and two - he and his coaching staff have to find a way to tackle the nerves and handle Olympic level pressure. At the end of the day though Sen was the first Indian male badminton player ever to reach the single’s semi-final.
Skeet shooters Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan finished fourth in the skeet mixed team event. They lost the bronze medal match to a Chinese duo by 1 point (43-44). The Indian pair missed 5 of the 48 targets, while the Chinese missed 4. But the silver lining and a huge thing to celebrate is the fact that these two shooters came within two points of clinching a historic bronze in an event in which no Indian shooter has won an Olympic medal before.
Weightlifter Saikhom Mirabai Chanu also finished fourth in Paris. In the women’s 49kg category, Chanu finished with a cumulative 199kg after her final clean and jerk attempt, where she failed to lift 114kg. Her cumulative total was 1 kg less than that of the Thai weightlifter who won the bronze. But, at the end of the day, the Tokyo Olympics silver medallist came within sniffing distance of a second consecutive Olympic medal.
India at Paris Olympics in numbers: 6*, 6, 52, 12, 100 and more
Yes, the six fourth-place finishes hurt and yes, they could have very easily been six more bronze medals for India, but let’s not lose sight of the positives that emerged out of these six stories in Paris.
Cruel and yet oh so encouraging.
Also, let’s not forget Manika Batra and Sreeja Akula who became the first table tennis players from India to reach the Round of 16 at the Olympics in individual events. The Indian women’s team of Batra, Akula and Archana Kamath made it all the way to the quarter-finals, which not even the bravest Indian table tennis fan would perhaps have predicted.
But there’s no doubt that there were athletes and sports from which more was expected.
In athletics, India fielded their largest contingent ever and finished with one medal (Neeraj’s silver). It’s true that expectations are overall low from athletics at the Olympics, but a number of athletes failed to even match their own personal bests.
In badminton, barring Lakshya, no other shuttler really had anything to write home about. This was the first time in fact that no Indian shuttler medalled at the Olympics after three editions (2012, 2016, and 2020). A lot was expected from the doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty, maybe even the gold in men’s doubles. PV Sindhu didn’t really fire on all cylinders and HS Prannoy was well below par.
Indian badminton at Paris Olympics: Hope and frustration in equal measure
India also had a full six-member archery contingent in Paris, but barring Olympic debutants Dhiraj, Ankita and Bhajan Kaur, no one else really shone. Deepika Kumari - India’s most talked about archer lost yet again in the quarter-finals in back-to-back Olympics.
Boxing was another disappointment at the Games. Bronze medallist from Tokyo - Lovlina Borgohain and Nikhat Zareen are both reigning world champions, but couldn’t medal in Paris. Nishant Dev’s quarter-final exit was tagged as ‘unfair’ and put down to poor judging and scoring, after he lost by a split verdict (1-4).
Thanks to Aman Sehrawat’s bronze the Indian wrestling contingent didn’t have to return empty-handed from Paris. Also, remember, Vinesh Phogat was the favourite to win the gold if she had been allowed to compete in her final, considering she had beaten the American wrestler who won the gold eventually twice before. And if Nisha Dahiya had not picked up a rather unfortunate injury, she too was looking good for a medal.
Overall, India’s Paris campaign was a mixed bag in terms of performance — a paradox of some of the cruelest finishes and yet some very encouraging signs found in finishes that didn’t secure medals, but made Indian sports history. There is of course, as there always is, a lot of room for improvement and many things to work on - both on and off the field of play. But at the same time, there’s a lot to celebrate too - and not just the medals and the medallists.
Akaash is a former Sports Editor and primetime sports news anchor. He is also a features writer, a VO artist and a stage actor see more
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
English (US) ·