India @ Beijing Olympics 2008

India is competing at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, People's Republic of China. A contingent of 56 athletes is representing India, and they have a support-staff of 42 officials. The athletics contingent is the largest, with 16 athletes.

For the first time since 1928, the Indian Men's Hockey Team was unable to take part in the Summer Olympics due to its failure to qualify. A two-year ban imposed by the International Weightlifting Federation after the 2006 Commonwealth Games doping scandal originally resulted in only one Olympic weightlifter, Monika Devi from India being scheduled to compete, but she too failed a drug test, and has also withdrawn. However, on August 9 it was declared she was clean, but the event she was to participate in had already closed.

On August 11, 2008,The final shot from Abhinav Bindra's rifle may not have been heard outside the packed hall in the Beijing Shooting Range Complex on Monday morning. But its bang was loud enough to lift the spirit of a billion-plus Indians back home.

No individual gold has mattered so much to so many people in the history of Olympics. It was a medal for Abhinav; it was redemption for India. Never again will anyone be able to point a smug, sardonic finger and say: "No Indian is good enough to win an individual Olympic gold."

India won more than one medal at a single Olympics only twice before at Paris Olympics in 1900 when Norman Pritchard won two silver medals in athletics and at the Helsinki Olympics, when they received a gold medal in field hockey along with the bronze medal in wrestling mentioned above.


Olympics have a total of 28 sports! 302 events! And India is sending a contingent of just 57 (USA is sending 596, China has 639 and even tiny Estonia sends 47 ). A look at the Indian contingent and their chances, reinforces the age old, sad story about Indian Sports, the most prominent this time being the absence of India’s national sport - Hockey. For the first time in nearly 8 decades, the Indian Hockey Team , which has done the nation proud (with 8 Gold medals), failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.

What is the cause of this dismal state of Indian Sports? We are the world’s biggest democracy, the second most populous country in the world. Then why is that in a span of 4 years, we are only able to produce 57 top athletes? ‘Outlook’ in their latest issue carried an article covering the top athletes favored to win medals at the Beijing Olympics! Not one of them was Indian! This is a matter of national shame, an aspect that the Indian Govt needs to look at closely. It is not enough to be a nuclear power, it is not enough to be an IT offshore house.

To be a real super power needs more than that, to be a real super power means giving the citizens every reason to be proud of their country. I also read about Iraq’s ban from this years Olympics and their subsequent approval to compete. Dana Hussain , a Iraqi female athlete has qualified for the 100 and 200 meter sprints. The whole world’s press has praised her commitment even though Iraq is in a grip of civil war. The world’s press has not even noticed or commented at Indian Olympians this year. Deservedly so.

These Individuals have now given enough reason for the government to take the sports seriously and start a steep rise in the health of Indian Sportsman competing at the Global Level!