The Olympic Games is the biggest and toughest competition in world sport, the athletes competing are the best in their field. Over the next couple of weeks there will be 117 Indians among them, wearing the tricolour on their chest. There's no telling how they will fare; some are tipped to win medals, others to finish strongly if outside the medal range. There are those who could finish eighth in an 8-person field (and prompt the inevitable, cringeworthy "X finished last" headline).
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There's one thing they all have in common: Every single one of those 117 athletes has earned the right to wear a jersey marked INDIA, and earned it in the hardest way possible. Every single one has a story. Every single one has already fought a fight just to get to Paris. Fight, fight, fight - against the circumstances of their lives, against their own base desire for comfort, against everyone who questioned their choices, against being just 'good enough'.
Tulika Maan only took up judo because her policewoman single mother didn't want her spending evenings post-school at a police station. The more Tulika got into the sport, the more sacrifices her mother had to make, but neither of them backed down. Tulika rose and rose on the back of her mother's strength, fought administrative apathy, won a Commonwealth Games silver. Now, she's India's only judoka at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Balraj Panwar joined the Indian Army primarily because it promised financial stability, much needed to support his family (single mother, four siblings). He picked up his first pair of oars only because a coach in the Forces asked him to try it out. He then worked hard at it - hard enough to stand out from his fellow Indian rowers and be the only Indian at the Vaires-sur-Marne nautical stadium this summer.
Srihari Nataraj's qualification may be pooh-pooh-ed as universality quota, but his presence in Paris only comes from the countless, lonely, laps of a swimming pool he's put in daily for about a decade as he strives to push himself in a field Indians don't traditionally excel in.
Every four years when the world's greatest sporting spectacle rolls around, they come, they compete, they get brickbats. 'Oh, a country of a billion and a half people can't even make it a two-digit medal tally'. 'Why do we spend so much on sport? Where is all the money going?'
At times, these Olympians actually do themselves a disservice with their natural humility, downplaying the scale of their achievement; it really isn't as straightforward as they make out. Performing at the Olympics is very, very tough, but getting to the Games isn't easy either. It takes years of relentless fight.
Vinesh Phogat knows this. You think her fight for Olympic glory starts when the women's wrestling freestyle 50kg preliminary rounds begin on August 6? It began when she first set foot in an akhara, and it peaked last year when she (and Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia) took on the system in a manner that's never been done before. In a land where power and politics and justice can often be indistinguishable, Phogat stood up for those who could not even if it meant considerable damage to her career and quality of life. What could possibly be more Olympian than that?
Everyone in Paris has taken a dip in that pool of bravery, to some extent or the other.
Deepika Kumari has gone to three Games as one of the top ranked archers in the world and been knocked out early each time. By the time it happened in Tokyo the tone of conversations around her started taking on dismissive notes. 'Forget Paris', they said. 'No chance.' Not after she'd taken time off for the birth of her child, not after she failed to make the team that went to the Asian Games. 'Forget Deepika'. Aged 30, she will now make her fourth Games appearance in Paris. You think that's down to chance?
Manu Bhaker went to Tokyo 2020 as a medal certainty and returned as the poster child of Indian shooting's disastrous performance there. She's bounced back to win three quotas, raising real medal hopes again. She may be bruised and battered from her previous Games experience, but she's back for more. Brickbats or bouquets, those arms will remain steady, the pistol unwavering.
"Everyone in Paris has taken a dip in that pool of bravery, to some extent or the other."
In 2022, PV Sindhu competed on a broken foot to win Commonwealth Games gold, and she's still paying the price for it. Not yet fully fit, she's struggled to rediscover the mojo that's made her the only Indian woman to win multiple Olympic medals - but try telling her that as she goes all out in training. It would have been easy for her to rest on her laurels and call it a day as one of the greatest Indian sportspeople of all time, but she wants medal #3, and her only aim is the big one. Fighter, capital F.
For six months after Tokyo, Neeraj Chopra did nothing but attend felicitations, eat good food and gain quite a few kilos. He could have been happy with creating history, with all the accolades and the spotlight, but that's not the kind of attitude that brought him all that in the first place. So, he battled hard: for consistency, for greater glory. He won a World Championship silver; told the world it was not enough and won gold the next year. He defended his Asian Games crown. He's not finished outside the top two in any event he's competed at since Tokyo. It's mindboggling, that consistency of his, this hunger for more. So naturally in Paris, he wants to take that large hall of fame statue of his, burn it down, and build an even bigger one. Glory doesn't come to those who sit around and wait for it to happen.
From identity to legacy, these athletes fight for everything, every single day. When the floodlights are switched off and the seats are empty and there are no cameras, and everything gets tied up in bureaucratic red tape, and the rest of us go back to our own worlds, they buckle down and fight. And then fight some more. That's all they do, these Olympians from India.
So when you see Neeraj Chopra swagger into the athletics arena or Nikhat Zareen bounce into the ring like they own it, when you see Harmanpreet Singh crouch low for a dragflick or Vinesh Phogat go even lower for a takedown, when you see Deepika Kumari notch her arrow and hold her breath or Manu Bhaker standing still, when you see Srihari Nataraj stretch out on the starting block, when you see Tulika Maan tighten her belt or Balraj Panwar steady his oars.... forget the end result for just a while and enjoy the experience. Think about what they've been through to get here, remember that the lives we live vicariously through them have been earned by sheer dint of hard work, sacrifice, and a never-back-down attitude. Celebrate that spirit, that courage... that fight.