Is Neeraj’s gold India’s greatest triumph across sports?

Anju Bobby George believes Neeraj Chopra’s Olympic gold is the country’s greatest triumph across sports.

“This is the best triumph across all sports because athletics is the centrepiece event. We can compare athletics medals with something like World Cup football medals, otherwise there is no comparison between an athletics medal and any other medal,” said the 2003 World championships long jump bronze medallist in a chat with The Hindu on Sunday.

“We are competing with multiple opponents, from more than 200 countries. It’s a common sport, anybody can compete in this. So, the competition will be that much higher.”

Great hockey record

India has had a magnificent record in hockey at the Olympics, winning eight golds including a hat-trick of triumphs in 1928, 1932 and 1936 a phase when Dhyan Chand mesmerised the world.

Then there had been a semifinal entry in football at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, during which Neville D’Souza scored a hat-trick, and in 1960 tennis great Ramanathan Krishnan made it to the last-four stage in the Wimbledon men’s singles.

Then there’s the 1983 cricket World Cup triumph which changed the face of the sport in the country.

P.V. Sindhu’s 2019 World Championship badminton gold, chess legend Viswanathan Anand’s and boxer Mary Kom’s multiple World titles and shooter Abhinav Bindra’s 2008 Olympic gold are the country’s first in individual sport. And there are Pankaj Advani’s multiple titles in cue sport and many more.

Does Neeraj’s gold in javelin throw fly high above all these? “Just check the number of countries taking part and the amount of competition we have to do. Athletics is a global sport, football is a global sport. To win an athletics medal is the toughest.

“I’m not saying that their triumph is any way less, but competition-wise, toughness-wise and acceptance-wise, Neeraj’s gold is the biggest,” says Anju.

V. Baskaran, who led India to the hockey gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, disagrees.

“We cannot compare this and that, I will not do that. As a gold medallist, I can’t say that this is higher than that. That would be unfair to the others,” said Baskaran, who was also a leading Madras University sprinter decades ago.

Learning process

“But Neeraj won it with authority in his first Olympics and ended a 120-year wait for an athletics medal. (Abhinav) Bindra went through two Olympics before winning gold in his third.

“This win by Neeraj is a learning process for those who have come close to a medal and lost, how an athlete should train and compete.

“This is a new generation, our athletes showed a brave, confident new face. Like golfer Aditi Ashok, who was ranked 200 in the world but narrowly missed a medal and finished fourth, like the hockey teams who fought so well and the men’s 4x400m relay team that broke the Asian record. The only events where our confidence level looked low were archery and shooting.”

Meanwhile cricketer Harbhajan Singh feels that Neeraj’s gold should be celebrated in a massive way.

“Cricket is a sport played by 12 to 15 countries while the competition is much more at the Olympics. This victory should be celebrated 50 times more than how we celebrated our cricket World Cup triumph,” said Harbhajan in an interaction with Aaj Tak.