Forgotten Heroes

Besides a string of gold medals in hockey, India's record in the Olympics has been, to put it mildly, pedestrian. There are a few names that invariably pop up when discussing India at the Olympics — hockey wizard Dhyan Chand, the so-near-yet-so-far experiences of Milkha Singh and PT Usha and the more recent medal winners such as Rajyavardhan Rathore and Leander Paes.But if you rummage through India's dismal history at the Games, there are some remarkable stories that stand out. Of players who excelled on the playing field — and sometimes off it — and are now largely forgotten.Perhaps the most remarkable of these Olympians is Jaipal Singh, the captain of the hockey team that won India its first Olympic gold medal — several years before Independence — in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Born in a remote village in what is now Jharkhand, Jaipal was taken to England by the English principal of his school in Ranchi. After two terms at a college in Canterbury, Jaipal joined St John's College, Oxford, where he made a name for himself as an ace defender in the university's hockey team. When he was chosen to play for India, Jaipal was a probationer in the Indian Civil Service. The decision to captain India, however, meant taking leave from the India Office in London. "I did not get leave! I decided to defy the ruling and take the consequences," he writes in his autobiography.
The Indian team, which included Dhyan Chand, would go on to win the Olympic gold medal convincingly. But by a twist of fate Jaipal did not play in the final. Dhyan Chand later said, "It is still a mystery to me why Jaipal Singh, after ably captaining us in England, and in two of the three matches in the Olympic Games, suddenly left us. I have heard many stories, but so far I have not had the truth." Jaipal himself did not throw any light on his sudden withdrawal. He merely says in his autobiography that on his return to London from the Olympics, Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, congratulated him personally.Jaipal's story does not end there. After the Games, he was told he would have to stay one more year in England because he had taken unauthorised leave. He immediately quit the ICS. After various jobs that took him from Calcutta to Ghana to Bikaner, Jaipal returned to Ranchi. There, he took a decision that changed the trajectory of his life. In 1939, along with a few others he formed the Adivasi Mahasabha which sowed the seeds for a separate Jharkhand. A Constituent Assembly member and a four-time MP, Jaipal remained till his death in 1970 an eloquent defender of Adivasi rights.If Jaipal was part of India's first tryst with hockey glory, there was another athlete — Norman Pritchard — who had already won two medals in the 1900 Paris Games. Born in 1875 in Calcutta to an English couple, he studied in St Xavier's School. Pritchard was a name to reckon with in the Calcutta maidan , winning the 100-yard dash for seven consecutive years.Pritchard's participation in the Olympics happened almost by chance. During a visit to London in 1900 he took part in and won the London Athletic Club's Challenge Cup for the 440-yard hurdles. Within a week he was competing against international athletes at the AAA Championship. Pritchard came second in the 120-yard hurdles and was chosen for the Paris Olympics. Pritchard competed in five events and won silver medals in the 200m sprint and 200m hurdles.There is, however, a dispute over whether Pritchard represented India in Paris. Though the International Olympic Committee credited his medals to India, the athletics statistics book of the 2004 Olympics said he represented Britain. This was after an article appeared in the Journal of Olympic History arguing that Pritchard had represented Great Britain.As for Pritchard, he returned to Calcutta after the Olympics and served as secretary of the Indian Football Association for two years. Later, he left for America and made a career in Hollywood, starring in silent films under the name of Norman Trevor alongside stars such as Cary Grant, Clara Bow and Ronald Colman. Legend has it that he died penniless in 1929.There are two sportsmen worth recalling in the years immediately following Independence. In the 1948 London Olympics, a teenage triple jumper from Bangalore, Henry Rebello, was considered a sure medal prospect. With the best jump worldwide in 1948 — 50 feet 2 inches at a national meet in Lucknow — he was the favourite for the event. Rebello followed it with a 52-ft one-and-half-inches jump, a few inches short of the world record, a fortnight before the Games. But on D-day, he faltered.As Rebello has recounted in an interview to sports journalist Gulu Ezekiel, he committed two fateful mistakes that drizzly and cold afternoon in London. One, he did not warm up before his jump; two, he went flat out in his first jump itself. The result was a torn hamstring as Rebello launched into his jump. He landed in a heap in the pit, his medal dreams in tatters. His misfortune was partially rectified by KD Jadhav, who won independent India's first individual medal in 1952 — a bronze in bantamweight wrestling.These pioneer Olympians are now mere names in the record books. But for a nation starved of Olympic glory, they serve as reminders of athletic achievement in the face of formidable odds.

Talking Hindi, eating dal-chaawal(pluses and rice)

Saturday evening came upon you like a breath of fresh air. Through with the boxing report after Jitender had punched holes in his Uzbek rival's confidence bag, it was time to take a small break. The invite on the table looked too tempting.There had been no time to look at these pretty cards till now. Now you did, and decided to go to the Indian ambassador's dinner at the Marriot the prospect of getting Indian 'khaana' drew you like a magnet.Outside, in the world beyond the Olympic Games, you found two things you were desperately looking for these past two weeks a taxi driver who could say more than Hello and Thank You and yes, the good old dal-chaawal.It was quite a fight to reach the hotel though and Zhu Lin should get the reward for being the most patient, helpful cabbie this side of the Brahmaputra. The address on the card was in English and you were in trouble. You got that translated by a volunteer but Lin was still clueless.A call to the press attache helped. "Hang on Alok, you'll get a call in a minute." The call came and a man speaking in chaste Hindi said: "Vishnu bol raha hoon. Driver ko phone deejiye," Well that did the trick. Vishnu was surely an Indian interpreter. Lin's face suddenly lit up and he said," Aw, cool. Let's go." He had waited for 20 minutes amidst all this confusion. And he spoke English!So how do you speak such good English? "All taxi drivers of China were asked to learn it for the Games. We were given special classes tough language, got to study so much man. The older guys just refused to learn it. For me, it opens up a new world." It sure does and it certainly helps.As you entered the hotel and walked up the stairs, you suddenly felt at home. The aroma of Indian spices casually wafted through into your system.Inside the hall, a cozy little party was on the ambassador, the Indian athletes and officials and several journalists were celebrating Abhinav Bindra's success and wishing for more. Old Bollywood numbers from the fifties and sixties were playing on a huge TV screen — Shammi Kapoor was serenading Sharmila Tagore. Yes, it felt like home.The dress code was formal but for the media, shorts and rucksacks were par for the course. You decided to mingle around and ran into a Chinese who said "Namaste"! Well, in this city of 1,000 language problems, this came as a shock. "Namasteji, aap?" "Jiang naam hai mera. University mein yahaan Hindi padhata hoon.""Good, so you call yourself Vishnu?" You got it wrong mate. "Vishnu mera shishya hai," he said and switched to English: "There are several others like Aakash, Vishal I have given them Indian names. Vishnu yahaan hai." Mindboggling."Aapko asuvidha to nahin hui?" asked Vishnu. You had not heard such chaste Hindi in a long, long time. Not even back home in Delhi. It was too much for the day. It was time to grab a plate, stuff yourself silly with dal-chaawal and roti and you were off to the Bird's Nest. Bolt was waiting to strike.

Most Golds By Any Country Since Soviet break-Up

So who has got China these 48 gold, 19 silver and 27 bronze medals? For starters, its women, much more than its men. A total of 27 gold and 53 medals have been won by the women.As for disciplines, contrary to the widely held view that China maximizes its hoard from a few sports, the host country has won at least one medal in 21 different disciplines. What's more, in seven of these disciplines - gymnastics, diving, shooting, weightlifting, badminton, table tennis and trampoline - it is the top medal winner, including a clean sweep of all seven diving gold decided so far.
This kind of dominance could not have been achieved without some athletes putting in stellar performances and China is no exception.It has 19 athletes who are multiple-medal winners at the Beijing Olympics. The bulk of them, not surprisingly are in the disciplines China dominated.But a couple of stars stand out from even this crowd of winners. One of them is the 20-year old rising star of gymnastics, Zou Kai. This athlete who is from Luzhou in then Sichuan province won three gold medals at these games - the men's team, individual floor exercises and the horizontal bars.
In the immediate aftermath of the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, Zou had lost contact with his family back home and was planning to break off from training to try and trace them.Fortunately for him and for China, his family was able to re-establish contact with him before he could leave for Luzhou, allowing him to continue his training uninterrupted.Another definite star is Guo Jingjing, the 27-year old female diver from Baoding in Hebei province. The eye-catchingly graceful Guo, who lists music as her hobby, had already announced her intention of retiring from the sport after the Beijing games. That perhaps added to her determination to retain the 3m springboard gold that she won in Athens and with Wu Minxia also make sure China kept the 3m synchronised diving title to itself.These two apart, there are badminton stars like men's singles winner Lin Dan and TT women's winner Zhang Yining - both also getting gold in the team events — who made sure there were no major upsets for the hosts.But, unlike in the Indian case, it is not the stars but the system that has really delivered and delivered big for China at these games. That alone can explain the breadth of its penetration across disciplines you wouldn't associate with that country - including sailing, rowing, fencing, beach volleyball and hockey.