If you had walked into the ESPN office any time during the first week of the Hangzhou Asian Games and told us that India would be returning with 107 medals, we'd have rolled our eyes, sat you down and patiently tried to explain that that's not how logical progression works.
You don't go from 36 to 53 to 65 to 57 to 70 (medals across all Asiads in the 20th century) to triple digits in one go... least of all when that 70 itself was so widely feted as a pretty grand achievement. From where we sat: behind data, behind precedent, behind objective analysis... that arbitrary target of "100+" seemed fantastical, naïve, even a bit silly.
What we'd forgotten, of course, was that that is the essence of sport. It's a naïve, silly fantasy that plays out in front of us in ways we cannot possibly dream up. It inspires and it invigorates. It makes you fall in love with it head over heels, chin tucked in. That essence is what we saw play out in Indian sport in 2023, a year unlike any before it, a year no one could have possibly seen coming.
In 2023, we saw Neeraj Chopra complete a golden circuit no Indian has come close to and then saw him start on round two almost immediately. The latter despite immense pressure from... a compatriot. Never mind the wicked, it's the great that know no rest. We saw two childhood BFFs from Kolkata do something no one even considers - beat China in China in Table Tennis. We saw a young 'un stand her ground, refuse to be intimidated by men in suits, or by the sheer weight of the occasion, and run the race of her life.
We saw another wait patiently for the last 0.002% of her race before kicking her way to glory, trusting herself, trusting her training. We saw a relay team finishing a Worlds semi second behind the USA. We saw Sumit Antil break one record (his own in the first place), then do it again. We saw India's medal tally in the Asian Para Games go from 33 to 72 to 111. We saw the nation's Olympic spirit shine bright in 255 smiles and hearts at the Special Olympics World Games. We saw a stadium of 26,380 deep within the bowels of a cricket-mad city rise as one and raise hearts and goosebumps and the hairs on the back of the neck with a GOAT-ed rendition of Vande Mataram to salute the men's national football team.
We saw a brother and sister duo qualify for the Candidates chess tournament, the first in the world to do so. They will be joined by three of their countrymen to compete in a tournament that had only ever seen Vishy Anand sit next to the Indian flag before. We saw a duo now known, and loved, simply as Sat-Chi, create history. We saw compound archery dominate the global sport in a way no Indian team has ever done -- of 10 available golds across the World Championships and the Asiad, they won 8.
To understand how impossibly incredible that last sentence is, India had won one gold in compound archery across the history of both events. Most of those sentences, in fact, are touch-and-go with what we would accept as credible. Read them out to someone from 2002, or even 2022, or even just before the moment occurred... and they wouldn't be able to comprehend it fully. Logic? Statistical progression? Objective analysis? At its best, sport takes these man-made mundanities in its hands and moulds them into nothingness. Like it did this year.
The unprecedented wasn't limited to just on the field, though. Off it, three exemplary champions and their peers showed a courage that is not normal. To go up against the system is one thing, to do it against one that's controlled by someone like Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh? Impossible... well, impossible before 2023 anyway. You may think they have lost the battle, that a Singh acolyte still controls the Federation, suspended or not.
Hell, the wrestlers think that too -- Sakshi Malik has retired, Bajrang Punia's Padma Shri is on the street, and next to it lie Vinesh Phogat's Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award -- but what you and they may not recognise yet is the effect this battle has had, is still having, on everything around it. A six-time (sitting) Member of Parliament from the all-powerful centre-ruling party has been dragged to court on serious charges. The Ministry has finally moved the headquarters of the Federation out of Singh's house, they've publicly acknowledged his unjustifiable influence on the sport. Even more importantly, young wrestlers and sportspersons have been shown that hall-of-fame greats care about more than just personal glory.
The sheer impact of the latter isn't tangible, but India's rarely seen a sportsperson do anything more inspiring than put their careers on the line and sit on the street seeking justice for those more vulnerable than them. That's A-grade heroism. You see, when you are fighting something as immovably powerful as the system that controls every fibre of your being, sometimes just stepping onto the battlefield is a triumph.
There is a lot of dark in this world and a lot of it in Indian sport. There are times when you think none of this is ever going to change, times when you see the world burning and evil pointing and laughing and you think why even bother and there come times when you just want to close yourself from it all. But let's not do that.
Let's remember what 2023 taught us about sport's best qualities... about life's: Be fantastically hopeful, be silly, be naïve. And when push comes to shove, never let anyone shut you up, never meekly accept injustice, and never stop fighting for those who can't fight for themselves.
Never, ever, back down.
Bring it on, 2024.