Indian sport's relationship with the Olympic Games is not complicated. We simply adore, yearn, pine and seek our best reflection in its large, alluring, yet very sharp eyes. As these 21st-century decades roll over, we've found and lost and found ourselves again in its gaze.
Naturally, who among us bystanders is not a little anxious on the eve of these Games? Fretting about how this story could go? Whether Paris 2024, following on only three years after Tokyo 2020/21, will produce what Rio 2016 did after the exhilaration of London 2012 - a fall from six medals to two.
But there's one difference - and it's a whopper. Tokyo gave us India's first athletics gold medal in javelin, just like Beijing 2008 had given us India's first ever individual gold in shooting. (Those who can't name India's two individual Olympic champions in their sleep should stand in a corner until the end of Paris 2024.)
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India's two golds at the Games, separated by three Olympic cycles, became earthmovers for the country's elite sport.
I remember standing outside the Beijing Workers' Gymnasium in 2008 talking to Akhil Kumar, bantamweight boxer of low guard, fast feet and equally quick mouth. He said: "Olympics main ek hi medal hota jo maaine rakhta hai aur woh medal jeeta hai Abhinav Bindra ne." There's only one medal that matters in the Olympics and that medal has been won by Abhinav Bindra.
It cannot be confirmed whether Akhil was being snippy about his dashing middleweight teammate Vijender Singh winning India's second - of three - medals from Beijing. Akhil had made the quarters, one round away from the medals, Vijender got to the semis and became Indian boxing's first - and so far, only - male Olympic medallist. It is also possible Akhil could have been merely stating a fact from a competitor's perspective.
Yet, gold-medallist Bindra would often say later that Rajyavardhan Rathore's Athens 2004 silver - the first by an individual Indian athlete - became the bolt of lightning that surged through his ambitions and dreams. Bindra's Beijing gold crashed through barriers of history and convention, marking down territory that would not be considered unreachable ever again. Thirteen years later, Chopra's gold and its aftermath has become the moon landing.
What that gold revealed to Indian athletes was the Formula: Performance into timing equals effectiveness for Olympic/Mega Event success. The importance of understanding exactly what's needed on the day and tapping into it stay ahead of the rest. On the day. In the moment. Between Tokyo and today, Chopra has only reinforced his status as a world-class performer who brings out what's needed when required most. His consistency at the elite level of his sport has become our new athletic template.
In the three years between Tokyo and Paris, Indian athletes across sport have become history-makers: India won the Thomas Cup in men's badminton for the first time. It found a place in the men's 4x400m relay world championships final with an Asian record in qualifying, while tearing down USA's shoulder. Satwik-Chirag won India's first gold in Asian Games badminton. Antim Panghal became the first Indian woman to win a junior world championship title and within a year, her bronze in Belgrade at age 19, made her the youngest senior world championship medallist. Avinash Sable broke Kenya's 24-year dominance of the CWG 3000m steeplechase with an audacious silver in Birmingham. At 17, D. Gukesh is the youngest challenger for the World Chess Championship, winning a Candidates event that had featured two other Indians.
Does all of this translate into a large double-digit Olympic medal haul in Paris? Of course not. That's why the Olympics are the Olympics. What these performances do show, however, is that the depth and spread of our elite athletes is expanding across sport. At an Indo-French Chamber of Commerce event in Delhi earlier this month, Athletics Federation of India president Adile Sumariwala explained his sport's progress through numbers: he listed India's athletics medals from the last three Asian Games (13, 20, 29) and Commonwealth Games (3, 3, 8). For an Olympics, he measures his sport's performance by the number of athletes qualifying. In Tokyo, it was 16 individuals and two relay teams; in Paris, it is 18 (9 met entry standards, others qualified via rankings) plus three relay teams. The other number to keep track of is how many of these athletes will make finals.
Sumariwala's reckoning is that it may take, "two to three maybe sometimes four Olympic cycles" to observe the progression of what is fundamentally a scientific process of training and preparing champions. "If the process is right, results will come - there's no doubt about it. Don't look at medals because medals will happen when they have to happen."
What his sport is grateful for is Neeraj. Who, Sumariwala said, "has done for Indian sport what I don't think anyone else has done". Across the country, athletes see themselves in Neeraj: "that he is like us, he is of the same flesh and blood, he eats with us, trains, sleeps with us. If he can do it, we can do it." Within two years of Neeraj's gold, five other Indians crossed the 80m mark, there were three Indians in the Asian Games javelin final, with silver medallist Kishore Jena throwing his personal best second on the biggest night of his life.
But will Neeraj win again in Paris? Gold? A second medal surely? What's the news on the damned adductor muscle? These are questions for just the todays and tomorrows. The Neeraj effect will continue to ripple on across the ages. More golds from other athletes, and the ripple will only get larger and wider.
Indians have always berated ourselves over how Michael Phelps had won more Olympic medals (28) than India. We're now past the Phelps tally post-Tokyo but remain wrung out by how other countries win them by the bucketful. India's grand total of 35 medals is still behind Ethiopia, Kenya and North Korea, never mind China or the United States.
Which is perhaps why there continues to be a deep allure around the Olympics in India, among athletes and the viewing public. It is why the word 'Olympian' was almost treated like a regal title for Indian sportspeople who had breathed that rare air. (Now, frankly, show us the medals). Had India won scores of medals in the past would we be as excited and nervous about Paris as we are today?
At that Delhi Indo-French Chamber of Commerce event, Alexandra de Navacelle de Coubertin, head of the Pierre De Coubertin Family association, (named after the founder of the modern Olympics) listened to conversations about the magnetic draw of the Olympics in India despite our poor record in sports outside hockey. Alexandra, a fourth-generation descendant of Pierre de Coubertin, remarked that perhaps this difficult past was not such a bad thing for Indians athletes today. Because the 21st century Games remain the best place for athletes to 'stand out'. To be distinctive. To cause a splash at the first, as pioneers and history makers. Our love for the Games still runs strong and deep, India is never jaded by the Olympics. And what better place than Paris for an old relationship to be re-kindled with new energy?