Let The Gains Begin!

From trying to prove that Indian dominance in an athletics event was not a fluke to vying for a third individual Olympic medal, the Indian contingent at the Paris Olympics is full of varied arcs

- ANIRUDH MADHAVAN

The first batter to score a century in the Ranji Trophy, S.M. Hadi, had played tennis for India at the 1924 Olympics. So did a criminal lawyer from Cambridge and a medical doctor from London. None of them, or the 10 others they accompanied to Paris, won a medal.

Exactly a century later, as India sends 117 athletes to the Games, once again in Paris, there is at least one solace. None of them has a PIL to file or a patient with a tummy ache to care for. They are all in. And they are all hungry. Some because this will be their last dance at the Olympics, some because it will be their first.

For Neeraj Chopra, another medal in Paris would prove that, yes, an Indian can dominate world athletics and that the throw in Tokyo was not a ‘pinch me’ moment. That the high his gold gave Indian athletics was not fleeting, and that there are now others stepping up their game.

Ask the 4x400m men’s relay team. In the past year, the team of Muhammed Anas, Amoj Jacob, Muhammed Ajmal Variyathodi and Rajesh Ramesh have won gold at the Asian Games—the first Indian team to do so since the days of Milkha Singh—and have broken the Asian record by clocking in at 2.59.05 in the heats at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August 2023. In an incredible feat, they finished fifth in the final.