JOLLY GOOD, INDIA!

Hello world. Well world within India, this is my first post! I am so excited..even if you guys are not. I did a lot, a LOT of thinking on what should I write about in the first post. Since the Olympics just got over, so I thought it would be a good idea to share my thoughts on the London Olympics with respect to Indian contingent. But before I get into it, I would like to confess that I am too naive about many things, I did not watch majority of the events of this Olympics, I depended too much on twitter to get updates, and I will praise my favourite people too much. Please feel free to disagree. Am I not the sweetest ever???

All I want to share is a little bit of flash back, how I think India performed this oly and what I think could have been better. So let us get started. Warning- this is going to be a lengthy post. Thank you.

London Olympics was special for me..Why? Not only because India did well compared to the last one, but I was really interested to get daily updates. Thanks to twitter. But only problem is that it took place in London...you know..Great Britain..they ruled over us for years.. I hate them, but their accent is so cute. Okay let’s come back to the topic.

I actually started watching Olympics from 2004 because a cousin wanted to watch weightlifting and boxing all the time. After I started asking too many questions, he stopped watching. Rathore won silver. Saw big pictures of him on newspaper the next day. It is then I realized Olympics is something big! Then came Beijing Oly. Well what to say, Abhinav Bindra was all over the news and newspapers. Felt really good when I heard national anthem on the event arena via the news channels. It made me take a little interest towards the games. Saina was doing well. Watched her games.. I was really sad when at a point of time she was leading by 8 scores, eventually lost the QF match. I almost said it out loud- "next time Sainaaaaa". Vijender and Sushil Kumar were surprising, because I'd never heard their names before. Seriously!

So London 2k12 was something I was waiting for...(eh..ten days before it started). Just like every other Indian, I had my hopes pinned to Bindra, Vijender, Sushil Kumar and Saina. Though I missed a lot of matches I could connect to all of them via twitter with live tweets from tweeple. Big big thanks to all of them. Bindra and Vijender disappointed us but then they won it once and made us proud..we are happy. Gagan Narang brought back the life into Indians when we were almost down after Bindra's exit. Vijay Kumar was a big surprise..again heard the name for the first time. The one who came as a dark horse took away the shining silver beauty with him. Excitement was on with Saina and Kashyap's terrific performance. The cute boy Kashyap won not only matches, but many girls' hearts. The most memorable match for me was Saina's QF match against Denmark's Tine Baun. I was going all Sreesanth-y when she won the match and qualified to SF. But sigh could not believe when she lost the SF. It is not easy to win against world no1 but still kind of hoped she will make it. Ever since that day I hate China. Felt like breaking all the made in china stuff, and then realized later that I would be left with nothing. I had prayed for Saina to win more than I did for my last semester results. It did put me a little off when I came to know she won the bronze medal after the Chinese girl forfeited out of the match due to injury. It did give me second thoughts whether I should start liking China a bit, but no I won’t! Just like her, I guess we all wanted her to play the full match and win. But as I was watching the highlights of the same next day in DD Sports (with 'jai ho' song playing in the background), I noticed she scored 5 points straight, which is not easy. Unfortunately it was too late and Wang Xin won the first set. But I do feel had the game not been discontinued, Saina would have got the second set. She so totally deserved the medal.

I feel so sad for our boxing contingent. Despite playing so well, faulty judgment robbed of their medal chances including Vijender’s. For Indian boxers, chances of losing are directly proportional to the number of times they punch. I seriously think they should punch those judges issued by AIBA. The only way I could describe Devendro is “mustards cracking up in boiling oil”. Yes, like ‘chota mooh, bade punches”. The 20 year old put up a terrific performance. I had watched one of his matches. With the start of bell, his punches started. He did not give his opponent a single chance to fight back.  Unfortunately, it did not work out quite well in QF. But he left us all with positive hopes for next Olympics. The magnificent lady of boxing, our lady tiger Mary Kom made us immensely proud winning her first medal of her first Olympics. Many said she was Mary 'Kaun?' before she won bronze...but for me, she was Mary Kom itself. But I never bothered to know about her, I guess most of us did not. This super duper lady won first bronze medal of Olympics women's 51kg boxing. Now how awesome is that!! Her life story makes one think what did they, as citizens, do for their country?! Salute to you, brave lady. Despite so many struggles in life, she made it big. She is a true inspiration. She apologized for not being able to win gold for the country. Actually, every Indian must respect and thank her for what she has done.

Another surprise came in the form of Yogeshwar Dutt. What a 'dhobi pachchad' (a total spinning your opponent's body or something) move to win bronze. But again our pehalwaan Sushil Kumar stole all the thunder with his tremendous performance. I watched the SF bout. Oh my God, what a win! At a point when he was 0 against 3 of Kazakh guy, I thought he is going to have to try for bronze, but he with his terrific and aggressive fight turned it upside down and assured us silver. I was literally jumping around like a monkey. Though I did expect Gold, but silver was equally good. In that way he became the only Indian to win more than one oly medal in individual event and our Olympics London edition ended up on an excellent note with hundred percent increase in medals from last Olympics. We should be proud. But not winning a single Gold is a little let down.

Not to forget, those who could not win medals were equally good. It takes years of practice and hard work to qualify to represent your country at Olympics. Tintu Luka crashed out of finals after clocking her season best in 800 meters. Irfan Thodi, despite having very few international exposures unlike other players, finished *tenth* in men’s 20km walk breaking the national record, Vikas Gowda became the 7^th Indian athlete to qualify to finals at Olympics, Krishna Pooniya too made it to the finals and was tied at 7^th position, Joydeep Karmakar finished 4^th and lost bronze by a whisker in shooting, Deepika kumara, the world archery champion ranked no.1 could not pull out her best performance, but I sincerely appreciate her for coming up to this level from a poor financial background. The 18 year old had made us proud at various occasions. Finally a big thanks and standing ovations to the coaches who trained their wards so well. Without them, the players could not have achieved these medals, they deserve it equally. All of these stars promise us a bright future in sports.

Several other contingent performed really well. It is not that they are incapable of but lack of proper training or facilities or something is hindering us our medal chances. Organizations like Olympic Gold Quest are really useful. What I can think of is, government should inspire more people into sports, do a talent search throughout the country and select talented kids. Set up training schools or arrange free training for them in various sports schools. Send them abroad for advanced coaching, if necessary. Make them participate in state and national events. Select few out of them and let them have international exposures. Fund potential sportsperson, let not make them deprived of anything that affects their performance. Why can’t India sweep majority of medals like China?! Why can’t government facilitate the sports people…does not a part of our taxes enough for that? As citizens, it also our duty to support our team. Cricket players, even if they lose, will become rich, but these people won’t. Moreover, it takes great effort (in India) for a non cricketer to reach to these levels. Not that the cricketers are less talented, but others have struggled more.

Now do not think I forgot our national game. Our hockey team displayed an overwhelming performance this time. *happy tears* The 8 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medal winners, this time made it even bigger becoming first from the bottom. We have come a long way!! *happy tears again*

Last but never the least, every Indian must thank and appreciate MADHURA HONEY. She with her astonishing performance won what any Indian could not even dream of. Next time she should be the flag bearer for us. The real woman power *now bheryyy emotional and crying out of extreme joy*

And about the official website of london olympics ( www.london2012.com )...it sucks!!

Before ending the post (stop torturing readers), I would like to apologize if I missed out any names you guys think could have deserved a mention. It is not negligence, but my lack of knowledge. Really sorry.

Shukriya… J