The Olympic Gold is often considered to be the pinnacle of success that every sportsman craves for in his lifetime. While some of the great names like baseball’s Babe Ruth, squash’s Jahangir Khan and cricket’s Sachin Tendulkar have been denied the chance to have the honour courtesy their sports never featuring in the Games, others like Pele and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar never appeared on the stage.
Pele was never eligible to play for Brazil’s Olympics Team because of his professional status while Kareem Abdul-Jabbar chose to boycott the 1968 Olympics. Tiger Woods have finally found some luck as he will have a shot at the Olympic Gold this year as Golf is set to make a comeback in the Games after 112 years. However, there still remain some great athletes who conquered almost everything in their sporting careers but the shiniest medal still eluded them.
Here is a look at 5 such names from the world of sports who made several attempts at getting a gold in the quadrennial event but were denied by destiny.
#1 Lee Chong Wei
It says something about a player’s stature when the Prime Minister of his nation bestows upon him the title of National Hero. And Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei has done almost everything to earn that respect. The badminton star, who took up the game reluctantly when banned by his mother from playing basketball at the age of 11, was ranked first worldwide for 199 consecutive weeks from 21 August 2008 to 14 June 2012.
Chong Wei emerged as the stalwart of badminton in the last decade and has dominated opponents from all nations. But the 4 time Commonwealth Games gold medalist first appeared in Olympics in 2004 but faced a second round exit. A vastly improved Wei was one of the favorites in 2008 but could manage a silver against a rampaging Lin Dan.
Lin Dan again proved to be his nemesis four years later as Chong Wei lost a hard-fought final to again settle for a silver. The Rio Olympics might well be the last chance for one of the greatest shuttlers to sign off with a gold.
#2 Paula Radcliffe
Unlike Lee Chong Wei, English long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe will have no chance to win the elusive Gold in Rio 2016 as the one of the greatest track athletes hung up her running boots last year. Radcliffe’s will go down as one of the most heartbreaking stories in sports as Radcliffe managed to secure almost every record in the sport to her name but not the Olympic gold.
Radcliffe finished her career as a six-time world champion and won both the London Marathon and the New York Marathon thrice apart from also winning the Chicago Marathon. She also held the record in women’s marathon which she set during the 2003 London Marathon. The now 42-year-old is also the current world record holder for the women's road 10k which she finished in a time of 30 minutes and 21 seconds. But her four appearances in Olympics didn’t yield a single medal, forget the gold.
#3 Franziska van Almsick
A child prodigy who was the youngest participant in the 1992 Olympics at the age of 14, she represented a unified Germany in swimming and lived up to the ‘prodigy’ tag when she returned home with a silver and a bronze. More accolades followed the next year as she was chosen as the Best German Sportswoman, an honour she would earn again in 1995 and 2002 apart from being named the Female World Swimmer of the year 1993 by Swimming World Magazine.
What more, Almsick even went on to be bestowed upon the honour of World Swimmer of the year in the same year.After such an astonishing start to the career, the sky was the limit for the German swimmer. But, as it would turn out in the years to come, not the sky but Silver was the limit for Almsick.
Franziska van Almsick went on to win 10 Olympic medals but could never lay her hand on the coveted gold medal. She ended her career with 9 Silver medals and a bronze. When she left the stage after a disappointing Olympics in Athens, she also took home the dubious distinction of having the most Olympic medals without ever claiming the Gold. Well, they don’t say for nothing that God is a great leveller.
#4 Merlene Ottey
Jamaica-born Merlene Ottey is one athlete who has defied age all these years. Her longevity has her earned her the sobriquet ‘Queen of tracks’. Her seven Olympic appearances from 1980 to 2004 are the most by any Track and Field athlete. The woman who was elected “Athlete of the Year” 15 times in Jamaica, won 14 World Championship medals between 1983 to 1997 —more than any other athlete, male or female. But like Almsick, gold eluded her too int he Olympics.
Her seven attempts in the quadrennial event fetched her 9 medals out of which six were Bronze. In Atlanta in 1996, at the age of 36, she came her closest to win a Gold in the 100m when she finished at the same time as the USA’s Gail Devers, but she was behind Devers by five thousandths of a second and it was enough to shatter her gold dreams. After her final shot at it in Athens at the age of 44, she didn’t appear again in the Olympics.
