Olympics and the saga of the miss of medals by India

India for that matter is a country where even after  72 years of Independence has not been able to make ONE international Athletics stadium with full facilities that could be awarded and provided to the sportsman for a full scale practice. Ant sports, we can take any, and we find that neither we can provide the full scale amenities or the facilities to them to carry on with their full scale preparation We always have to send our sportsman, be the budding or be the one’ who are internationals to abroad for training

In the last 72 years of our sporting culture  we have never been able to either have a full scale lab where the science of aports could be experimented with, could be researched with, could have found certain inference on which we could have taken a lesson to prepare our sportsman and woman and bring about a change in the line of thinking about our sports about the games that our buddies , budding stars of sports or our famed reputed international athelete comptete with.

A lot of silly mistakes have cost us dear and we had nothing left except to bang our heads against the wall We have also committed many a hara-kiris and incompetent decision that really has killed our sports to such an extent that some of them have gone to the debris Today I shall recount and write on a few which really cost us the medals at the internationals

1. > 1948 : Henry Rebello misses to win a medal

          Henry Rebelo was one of the most gifted and the most natural athlete that was born at India and one would NEVER believe that he once had the World Record at his pocket in the triple jump .  It was the London Olympics where the entire nation was eagerly expecting India to win atleast two medal in Hockey and in Athletics

Henry was moving at the very right direction. He scaled all the barracades and hurdles, one after one to make it to the Olympic proper. He got no and nothing as an incentive or as any facilities from the Government then. India was just a year old as a new nation born and it was  celebrating its first Independence TheCONSTITUTION also was not framed as well Sports was NEVER the idea of anybody overe here at India

In this kind of a mindset and back ground Henry Rebello first cleared the minimum qualifying standard that was required to gain an entry in the London Olympics. He first cleared a distance of 16.48 metres to qualify for the Olympics proper Then managing some money and borrowing it from his near and the dear one’s he set his sight for the two European meet before the Olympics to compete against the BEST of the business in the world He won both the meet and send across a kind of a wave which was simply unbelievable to digest, and believe . He had in the second meet jumped a distance clearing it by 17.46 metres which then was a world record set Henry by then before the London Olympics was termed as and was considered as the BEST Triple jumper in

the world The distance between him and the second best in the two consecutive meet then held was more than a metre in both the two meets then

Came the Olympic proper at London, it was unbearable cold The Indian athletics contingent was such that they had no track suit to wear and that was not provided as well as to them The practice session for the track and the athletics were times in such a manner that it was the early morning where the athletes would have to practice All the other athletes were and would wear the track suit then to keep their body warm and practice with the track suit on, where as Rebello had to do it wearing a short and the banian. This acted on his body for a few days when he was there practicing and horning himself fpor the meet to produce his best for the finals

In the finals he was the one who the world was looking to do some miracle. India as a nation was NEVER taken for granted for anything in Sports and if anybody then at the World who honoured and respected the Indians during the Olympics, then it was the GREAT Major Dhyanchand and Hockey and that is where India earned some respect or else it was nobody who would respect India  for anything at the Olympics

Came the moment and Henry was ready to show and prove the mettle and the mettel that he carried . He borrowed a pair of spike from the American athlete which fitted somehow in his leg to jump. He had warmed himself and had measured his runs as well and it was just to jump.Six chances are given for the jump to every athlete to show his mettle in the Olympic finals for the Triple Jump or the Long jump

Just before his chance had come to show his mettle , there was an announcement that the Queen had arrived at the ceremony and the jumps and the event would be halted by a few minuters. Once that got over there was a medal ceremony to take place in the Olympic Athletics Stadium proper and the triple jump was delayed by about 15 minutes.Henry as said did not possess the trach suit and the warm up shoe to keep his body warm . He had to wear that short and he had to remove his spikes as a rule because when the event is not held one cannot wear the spikes and roam about at the place where the event finals would be held

The heavy cold weather completely cooled his body  The feet got freezed as well in the blowing cool weather of London then The cold waves blowing made his life difficult Once the event started after about 20 minutes where the medal distribution ceremony fpor one of the finals was over, the chance came in . He leapt the distance in his first attempt and the way he ran he PULLED his muscles In the Triple Jump one has to run before taking the HOP-STEP-and ther JUMP. That run which h took in the very first jump he PULLED his muscles very badly His thigh muscle got injured because of the COLD CRAMP and when he exerted that kind of a pressure and the inertia to it to run to gain the momentum for his jump and the inertia for the leap he and his calf muscle got cramped first and after he finished his first jump after landing on the pitch he developed such a pain that he could not het up from the feet He was helped to come out of the pitch .

After he complained that he was finding to stand on his feet and asked for a medical help the Doctors of the games at  village came to his rescue. Thery to;ld him and the coach of the Indian athletics team that he will not be able to jump anymore because the muscle not only got pulled but there was a tear in his calf muscle

A determined Henry was NOT to leave the field this way Not adhering to any advise he got ready to wait for the second jump. When his chance came with that kind of an injury and the pain he took his run.He jumped the distance only to fall on the pitch and never to get up .He was escorted to the main medical centre for further treatment He was declared that he would not be able to further participate in the meet the event and in the Olympixs any more That ended his career in the Olympics as he was never to participate anymore in any of the athletics event at India.

Lack of provision of the facilities, amenities ( Track suit ) and lack of knowledge of Sports Science paid dash to the expectations of the Indian Another athlete a Christian Mr Devine Jones, who was a Boxer also met the same fate when he entered the ring in the boxing and that ended India’s any hope and any chances in the London Olympics The moment of GLORY was HOCKEY where India beat Breat Britain by 3-0 to win her FIRST OLYMPIC GOLD in the Olympics after the Indepenence

B ) >  1960 : Rome Olympics , Milkha Singh misses the medal 

Before I start writing about him let me make it that he was an athlete who simply came into the scene without any moulding and without any planning A glass of MILK which would be the incentives for the Jawans then if they ran the race of five kilometer and win that forced him to take part in the meet He somehow managed to win that rcae

From there it was this, it was that, it was running these ets of race for his Unit the EME at Secundrabad, then running it for his Army team in the Open nationals , it was like making an omellete first on a pan, then using that to make the scrambled eggs, then using the same for making a porched egge ,really speaking Milkha was a BORN real and very natural 200 metres runner who could also run the 400 metres But our lack of the knowledge of Sports Science, then and which even now reins, and the short vision of our Sports administrators converted this runner a very NATURAL 200 metres runner into a full fledges 400 metres runner

What totally made our head go berseck was when he beat the very famous Pakistani runner Abdul Khalique in two consecutive meet at the 1958 Asian Games in the 200 metress and again in the 400 metres and when he again pushed Abdul Khalique into the fourth place in the 400 metres run at Pakistan where the Pakistani CEO of that nation Mr Ayub Khan named him the Flying Sikh we as a nation again completely got confused to believe that he was the best in the business in the 400 metres run

What we in terms of Sports Analytics failed to read that while beating Abdul Khalique in the 400 metres run at Pakistan where he was named as the Flying Sikh was the fact he completed his first lap of 200 metres while eadrunning that 400 metres in a flat 21 seconds . What we failed to raed was that in the Manila Asain games at Phillipines in 1958 where he beat Abdul Khalique in that WORLD FAMOUS race was that when he completed that race in an under sub 23 seconds . He finished fourth in the Rome Olympics in 1960 but while doing it he not only beat the world record but he also finished running the first 200 metres in exact 22 seconds The ultimate winner of that Oympics in the 200 metres had clocked a time which was more as compared to him

No knowledge of Sports Science nothing that we knew then as even now as Sports Science we completely failed to use his talent very appropriately and fielded him in one event rather than the two and as a result we could not get any medals from him despite of the facts that in his entire carrer while running the 400 metres he would always complete the first 200 metres in sub 23 seconds 

Technicality Where We Failed To Analyse Milkha - ::

Undoubtedly he was winning all the races that he was participating and in one of the race he clocked 44.60 seconds to create a new world record However what we as a nation and those who were hois coaches then failed to anticipate and read that everytime that Milkha was winning a race and participating he was always running in the first three lanes Nilkha except for the Rome Olympics finals did not run in any lanes which was or which could be the 4^th, 5^th and the 6^th lane . 

Running in the lanes that I have mentioned here it requires a bit of different techniques Especially in the place where one has to take a bend while running at the places where the lanes bend the running has to be such that one has to run very near and closed to the lines of the track and the other is  the holding of the breathe while running in  those areas and balancing the stride though the stride ought to be stretched to lessen the steps also ought to be calculated and the strides as well ought to be such that some extra steps need not be taken else the runner would stay behind

The classic example of thi was Edwin Moses who while running the 400 metres hurdles would take only 13 steps and fly over the hurdles in the 14^th . That use to save his energy while performing the final burst .Those coaches then always made Milkha to practice and run in the first three lanes The running in the first three lanes in the 200 maetres and the 400 metres is very different from running in the last three lanes.

What happened in the Rome Olympics is that from the first heats to the finals Milkha continued to get the fourth or the fifth lane I think in the finals of ther Rome Olympics he was placed in the sixth lane He had come to thje Olympics with a record of having lost in only two races the first was his ouster in the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne and in between he had lost a race in the finals at Helsinki in one of the meet then In the Rome Olympics he qualified in the first heats running in the fourth but he did not finish first The Americans and the African coaches noticed how he ran in the fourth lane and they immediately chalked out a plan for him to corner him

In the Rome Olympics he did not finish first in one  or any of the heats but he qualified for the finals Those very professional coaches absolutely had derieved and chalked out a plan to corner him and they executed it to the nicety and perfection. Over it in all the heats and the finals he was placed in the lanes from fourth to the fifth That extra technique to run in the lanes where the bends are a bit stretched and the effort and technique to counter those bends made his life a little hard. He lso it over there

Had the Indian coaches made him to practice in the lanes from 4^th to the eight and had they taken some advise from the foreign coaches about the science of running in the lanes from the fourth to the eight the result would have been different Had they utilized him for the 200 metres race for running in the Olympics at Rome atleast he would have won a Silver if not a GOLD He finished with a fourth place standing though he smashed the world record His loss brought to nation to a standstill and it was remorse to many a days.

1964: Tokyo Olympics >< G S Randhawa finishes fifth even after clocking 13 second

He was not and never a hurdlet and that too a 110 metress hurdler He was into a different kind of a zone in athletics but he had a fantastic speed which was very hard to find in a middle distance runner All his life till then till in 1963 he was not running the 110 metres race or the 100 metres hurdles but looking into his dash he ws in 1963 asked and converted into a  110 metres hurdles.

He was not an athlete who could have been beaten by any stretch of imagination here at asia be it the hurdles or any race in the middle distance running But hurdles was something which needs a different technique Our coaches then were not in a position to advise him about the techniques when it came to running this race from the 30^thmetres of mark to the 70^th ie from the third hurdles clearance to the seventh one

For thgis he should have been sent to Europe for competition and learn something either from the Ameriacans or the Europeans But that did not happen.One of thje reason for that was the country which spent hardly about 1% of it’s annual budget in the National Budget for the development and mouldings on the women’s health, child care and Sports, would not think in terms of investing in sports by sending our athletes to the continent outside Asia to horne their skill into a medal winning entities at Europe.

The results at Tokyo was fantastic The only place where he faltered was that the heats to qualify for the semis and the finals were held on the same day The tact could have been finish within the first three or four to qualify for the finals  and preserve that energy for the finals by not stretching too far and too hard to make it to the finals The reversed happened He prodiced two brilliant display of terrific bust in the semis and the quarters of the heats to make it to the finals finishing second on both the account but while doing that he spend his excess 60 % of energy The finals were scheduled a day after and it generally takes about 36 hours for the body to refresh and recoup That time was reduced to only 24 hours. That extra little 12 hours of timeless recovery made the things impossible for the finals 

In the finals he was leading the pack for about 70 metres but from there he started fading out because the body would not respond to his want of speed and the inertia generation also started taking a dip That 12 hours of less rest was making all the things impossible

He ultimately finished fifth with a recod timing of 13 seconds flat If our coaches then had asked him to restrainm himself by finished a third or a fourth in either of the heats successively to qualify for the finals or

even as a best timing losers for the finals maybe he would have ended woith a medals in the finals as that energy saved would have placed him on a much higher echelon in the finals.  but poor knowledge of tactical gamuit and poor knowledge of sports science then as our coaches  who were ignorant of those science and sports science, could not see him and help him to come up a meddlaion  tag or a medal  at the Olympics

1976 : Montreal Olympics :  A sick Sriram Singh finishes seventh

It was ONE of the MOST DREADFUL result that has ever emerged in the annals and in the history of Indian Olympic athletics

To start with no one ver expected anybody from India to make it to the finals of anything except hockey in the Montreal Olympics However TWO shocking results came out from the Track and the Field events The first was Sriram Singh losing to Alberto Juantorena in the finals of the 800 metres race and then on the last day Shivnath Singh running the Marathon and keeping the fifth place uptil 23 and a half kilometres finished at the 11^th place These two events send a spark to the athletics fraternity but the sorry state of affairs continued as far as the Olympic athletics story regarding India hovered then and thereafter

Beating one by one and upsetting all the calculations Sriram Singh with the thirs ever best timings in the heats at Montreal reached to the finals He poured in everything to make it to the last stage of the finals In the heats he was not pitted against Alberto Juantorena but in one of the heats in the quarters he finished and he was better than the timimng of Juantorena to qualify for the next round

He reached the finals but in the process he caught flu As it is and as it was Sriram Singh had that effect of flu and pneumonia from his childhood Over it the weather of Montreal too which was against his liking caught him He was not in the very best of health in the semis of the heat but he blistered to make it to the finals The after effect was he was down with heavy temperature before the finals

The Indian coach without knowing how to take care of the after health effect from a strenuous work one in the field competition of sports thinking that the sauna bath will relieve him and make his muscles relax and loose seeked the permission of the Canadian authorities at the games villahge and send him for a sauna bath With the temperature of the body so high and over it the external heat of the sauna bath applied his muscles got warmer and the internal temperature of his body increased and he was teeling under severe headaches and body pain

The authorities over it asked him to live on milk and fruit juice rather than the solid food This absence of the calorific value that ought to be added to the body and the proper medicine that could have revitalized him and could have added more energy and supplement to his body remained unfulfilled and this was that completely took away his BRONZE medal from the Montreal Olympics

 THE LACK OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF SPORTS MEDICINE AND FOOD SUPPLEMENT IT WAS WHICH DEPRIEVED INDIA OF ANOTHER MEDAL IN THE TRACK EVENTS OF HER HISTORY AT THE OLYMPICS

In the finals Sriram for the firt 650 metres cleary led the field He ran in a way that Alberto Juantorena who was plaged at the fith till the last 650 metres had to really bring all his years of expertise and the strength to surpass one by one and in the last 50 metres he went and surged past Sriram Singh Once Alberto Juantorena passed him there were others as many as five who got past him

The stort would say that all the others started beating Sriram Singh but actually not Never was that case

The TRUTH is without having taken the solid food after that sauna bath without having anything in terms of thee extra energy for that final burst and with the muscles of the legs totally weared and tired he started fading away as he ws completey without any strength, stamina, endurance to use it for his last lap of burst His tank was completely empty and he thus faded out to finish seventh though in the process he set the ALL TIME

BEST ASIAN RECORD from Asia to have set the personal best & Asian best timimg of his career in the 800 metres in 1976

Thereafter a HUGE wave was created in the fraternity of Indian sports and Athletics arena Most of them were in the process of turning him into a 1500 metres runner That would have been a catastrophe to his future in running In that Olympics they saw and the one who noticed it was Illyas Babur who saw how a 5000 metres and a 10,000 metres runner Shivnath Singh was dragged into the Mararthon running and how he finished 11^th Being a WILY a very experienced and a very analytical coach himself it was Illyas babur who advocated that in the future Sriram could be used as a dual runner in the 400 metres and the 800 metres of run Sriram initially had started as a 400 metres runner but over the peiod between 1972 when he participated in the Munich Olympics 400 metres of race he and his coach turned him into a 800 metres runner and he made it that far

Sriram after the Montreal Olympics participated in the 1977 World athletics Championship and again in the 1979 edition of it finishing seventh and in the 1980 Olympics he lost out in the semis In between in the 1978 Asian games he won the GOLD . If he was added as a runner in the 400 metres propbably something could have come better but his health  as explained the ashthama prevented him to take that extra risk of running the 800 metres Strangely the SPORTS MEDICINE could not free him of that illness which he carried in his entire sports career till he ran for India and we lost WORLD CLASS runner in the process who could have given us a medal at the Olympics

Ignorant on that matter not only we lost Sriram Singh who kept on losing in the World Athletics chanpionships we also lost out Shivnath Singh who was wrongly pitched into different type of a race The effect had a strong bearing on Shivnath and his health  who lost his life to the sickness and illness

Moscow 1980 : Mahavir Singh, Kartar Singh Lose to falcity

1980 would go down as the most heinous Olympics in the history of the world It was because America and as well as 36 different nation decided not to participate in the Moscow Olympics because of some political reason As such the boycott robbed the Olympics of its sheen and the shine

It was first of many Olympics where for the first time world over the entire games were telecast by the Russian Government and the Russian authorities This game was the first in the annals of the games and sports that the telecast wee done to gain the TRP , the advertisement and the resources in terms of the money It was an attempt made by the Soviet authorities to enhance the popularity of the games through the telecast

This game because of the boycott of so many a nation and it’s athlete made the organisers to completely revamp the formats of every events and for the first time in the history of the Olympics the wrestling event was  contested by dividing the wrestlers into two groups in each weight category The first four from their two groups in each category would fight against each other in the semis and then the two winners of the semis would move into the finals and the two losing semi-finalist would be decided on points as to who gets the bronze

Mahavir Singh of India in the very low weight category and Kartar Singh of India in the heavy weight category finished fourth in their respective events Both the wrestlers werwe made to loose bcause of the points in the semis and again when it boiled down to decide the Bronze medallist it was again the points that came into foreplay and both of them finished fourth This was the same result that India achieved in 1972 when two Indian wrestler  finished fourth then and now we had two Indian wrestler finishing fourth here

The referess at Russia were very biased at awarding the points when it came to the Indians on the mat Mahavir Singh for him this was his first Olympics He was an unknown name but the way he fought he became the toast of the Olympic village but the last  bout the semis in which he was made to lose and the way the points counted for the Bronze where he lost out in that made him to lose his head and he once for all lost his place in the world of wrestling at India

This loss was too much for mahavir to feel good and he very soon faded away from the wrestling scenario However kartar Singh won the Silver in the Asiad in 1982 a Gold in the Asiad in 1986 and in between he won the Commonwealth Gold to become one of the most illustrated Indian wrestler of sall time in the annals of Indian wrestling

1984 : P T Usha nearly made it to lose it for all

If the 1980 Olympics were boycotted by 36 nations including America the  1984 Olympics saw the Socialist block giving it back to USA and all the Communist and the so called the socialist countries boycotted the games 

In such a scenario the Olympics lost it’s weight and the boycott of the USSR then, made all the difference to the games In this context the games threw a good chances to the one’s who were in the middle rung of the ladder in their events and P T usha was the one who made an international headline when she qualified for the finals of the hurdles in the 400 metres

A lot was expected and a lot of hopes got dashes when she ;lost by 1/100 of a second to finish fourth That made a lot of hearts to break here at India but the fact is if the other countries had not boycotted this games  T Usha would not have reached the finals The atheletes from the East Germany then, Russia, Cuba, which boasted of so many hurdlers in that category would have participated and things would not have been so easy for P T Usjha then 

2000 Melbourne Olympics : Gurcharan Randhawa loses in the 81Kgs Boxing quarters

This again went to counting after both Gurcharan and his opponent from Ukraine Fedrchouk. 

Gurcharran was leading by 12-11 till eight seconds before the end of the bout The bout finally ended at 12-12 That was a draw but when it came to counting the points on the basis of the punches thrown to garner those points in the countback system the Ukranian was declared the winner for being more aggressive, and throwing more punches beside scoring four vital points in the last session of the encounter

2016 : Deepa Karmakar loses the Bronze in Gymnastic

When did India do so very well at Gymnastic in any of the International events Well the first was in 1982 Asiad at New Delhi when our team in the Men section finished fourth Then a lad by the name of ashish gave us a medal in the Commonwealth Games held at New Delhi but the MIRACLE came when a lady by the name of deepa Karmakar started winning the medals for India in the International arena and so much so that she made it to the finals of the events at the Olympics at London in 2016

PRODUNOVA was the style that she endorsed in that Olympics However she finished fourth in that event in the Olympics thus missing out a Bronze in the Olympics 

Reason for missing out-:

There were two reason that Deepa was made to lose that medal The first was during her landing she somehow could not avert her BUTTOCKS at times to touch the fllor The technicalities wwere such that while landinh just say 0.3 or 0.4 cms lurging forward her nech and the shoulder a bit forward would have balanced her centre of gravity to put and place her lower portion of the body over the ground to avert her to touch that

Then comes the team Now-a-days the events are telecast in the Olympics not only to telecast the events worldwide but to get the maximum viewres the maximum of TRP and the advertisement connected to that With that comes the question of providing the SUPPLEMENTS to the participating team to bring the same numbers of competitors for the next Olympics In other words to maintain the team so that in the next Olympics the same country sends as much as the same numbers of competotors to participate in the events at the Olympics

Switzerland had a team and her competitor got that advantage India and Deepa did not have one and that turned pout the disadvantage Just one-and-a-half points was the marginal difference and that was because the Swiss contingent had thrown a team for the event at the Olympics for Gymnastic India did not have any Had India had  a team of female gymnastics the story could have been different 

Nevertheless we could not win that Olympic Bronze and it came very near to a striking distance of India before it went out of the grasp

That is it