India is aiming high in the on-going Olympics in Rio de Janeiro which features the largest Indian contingent at the games ever. Norman Pritchard was the first Indian to win a medal, by picking up the silver medal in the 200-metre sprint at the 1900 Paris Olympics. During the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, India won its first gold medal by virtue of the Indian Men’s Hockey team.
Till date India has won 26 Olympic medals, but the tally could have increased considerably if luck had favoured the nation. A few days back, Indian shooter Abhinav Bindra failed to grab a medal when he lost the shoot-off in the Men’s 10-metre air rifle event to Ukraine’s Serhiy Kulish. There have been instances where Indian’s faltered in the final moment and missed out on Olympic glory.
Let us have a look at 5 instances where Indian athletes came closest to winning an Olympic medal:
1) Milkha Singh (1960, Rome)
Milkha Singh is arguably the most prominent athlete in Indian history at the Olympics before Abhinav Bindra’s Gold medal win at the Beijing Olympics. The “Flying Sikh” was introduced into the sport while he was serving in the Indian army.
A recipient of the prestigious Padma Shri award, Milkha was the first Indian to win an individual athletics gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
Born in Punjab during pre-Independence period, he faced the perils of communal riots. But he managed to put the troubles behind and eventually moved to Delhi and stayed with his sister for a brief spell and it was his brother Malkhan, who forced him to join the army. The Punjab-born won several Medals in his career including 2 medals each in 1958 Tokyo and 1962 Jakarta Asian games.
But his most popular and disappointing moment of his career came during the 1960 Rome Olympics where he finished fourth in the 400 metres sprint category. He missed out on an Olympic medal by a negligible margin in a photo finish, having taken only 0.1 seconds more than South African Malcolm Spence.
2) Joydeep Karmakar (2012, London)
The shooter from the ‘City of Joy’ was a whisker away from enjoying the taste of success at an Olympics event. During the 2012 London Olympics, Joydeep Karmakar fell short of Slovenia’s Rajmond Debevec score by only 1.9 points in the men’s 50-metre rifle prone event.
Having finished 7th in the qualification round, the Kolkata-born shooter was eyeing at a possible medal at the Games but reality can be harsh at times. Back in 1994, Karmakar became the junior national champion in his first year of participation at around the age of 15.
The shooter won the Arjuna Award in 2012, he has now set up a Shooting Academy in Kolkata named "Joydeep Karmakar Shooting Academy" in Salt Lake, Kolkata, where he along with other International shooters are guiding new talents for a prosperous career in the sport.
3) Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (2004, Athens)
Leander Paes is undoubtedly the most successful Indian Tennis player at the International event after the legendary Vijay Amritraj. The tennis star from Kolkata is also considered one of the greatest doubles and mixed doubles players to grace the racquet sport. Having won 8 doubles and 10 mixed doubles titles, he is the oldest player to win a Grand Slam title. Leander came into limelight when he won the bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Mahesh Bhupathi is second only to Leander in terms of Grand Slams won and was the first Indian to win a slam in the 1997 French Open along with Rika Hiraki in mixed doubles. Leander and Bhupathi formed a lethal pair in Men’s doubles and made the nation proud on many occasions including a Wimbledon and two French Open titles.
The one tournament where the Indian-duo would have loved to make a mark was the 2004 Athens Olympics where they lost the bronze medal match to Croatian pair of Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic.
4) PT Usha (1984, Los Angeles)
PT Usha is widely considered as one of the best athletes that India has ever produced, hailing from Kerala she took Indian sports to great heights. During the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, Usha won two silver medals in the 100 metre and 200-metre category and followed it up with 4 gold medals and a silver medal four years later in the Seoul Asian Games.
Apart from the glittering medal-studded career, the ‘Payyoli Express’ would be still wondering about the 400-metre hurdles event at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles where he missed out on a bronze medal by the slightest of margins.
PT Usha missed out on a bronze medal being slower by only 1/100th of a second than Romanian Cristieana Cojocaru. The expectations of the entire nation faded away due to the nail-biting photo-finish race.
5) Indian National Football Team (1956, Melbourne)
Indian football may not be a dominant force in football in the present day, but the men in blue also had their glory where they were a force to reckon with in world football. It is true that India qualified for the 1950 FIFA World Cup (Jules Rimet Cup back then) and was drawn alongside Sweden, Italy and Paraguay in Group 3.
But several reasons like lack of proper playing boots available and a shortage of funds to provide ship fares eventually forced India to skip the competition which saw the historic match between hosts Brazil and Uruguay at the iconic Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
Six years later ‘The Blue Tigers’ got another opportunity to prove themselves in the world arena at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, in which they began on a high having the better of hosts Australia by 4 goals to 2 in the group stages but they were defeated by Yugoslavia in the semi-final.
The Indian side still had a chance of picking up a bronze medal against Bulgaria but was defeated by the European team 3-0.
