A Quiz Lover's Delight, Some Olympic records do matter ::: Several Indians have missed 'medals' by whiskers; was it jinxed ?

 Dipa Karmakar – Rio 2016 Olympics, women’s vault gymnastics

Dipa Karmakar was the first female gymnast from India to make it to the final of the Olympics vault event. The Tripura gymnast landed the difficult Produnova Vault but missed the bronze by 0.150 points.

Aditi Ashok – Tokyo 2020 Olympics, women’s golf

Making her second Olympic appearance, Aditi Ashok was on the money from Round 1 of the women’s golf event. She consistently held her spot in the top three after three rounds but slipped to fourth in the final round. 

Aditi missed the bronze on the historic August 7, 2021. 

Achievers at Tokyo: Hindustan Times 

Women’s hockey team – Tokyo 2020 Olympics

An exemplary performance and the Indian women’s hockey team reach the semi-final of an Olympics for the first time. But the Indian eves lost the bronze medal match 4-3 to Great Britain. The Indian football team had its best performance in the Olympics when it featured in the bronze medal contest at Melbourne 1956. 

India lost 3-0 to Bulgaria to finish fourth.

Milkha Singh – 1960 Rome Olympics, finished fourth in 400m race.

Legendary sprinter and ‘flying Sikh’ Milkha Singh missed the medal by a whisker in the men’s 400m sprint at the Rome Olympics. He finished in fourth position in the final, just 0.1 seconds slower than the bronze medallist.

Prem Nath – 1972 Rome Olympics, men’s 57kg freestyle wrestling

Freestyle wrestler Prem Nath fought till the seventh round and accumulated nine penalty points in all, and missed the medal.

Earlier, scores were calculated by handing penalties for losses. At the end of all rounds, the three wrestlers with the fewest penalties won medals.

PT Usha – 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, women’s 400m hurdles

The 1984 heartbreak came when PT Usha came close to winning a medal in athletics. Payyoli Express, as Usha was popularly called, missed the bronze medal by one-hundredth of a second. Yet again, everyone said, it is jinxed !!

Rajinder Singh - 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, men’s 74kg freestyle wrestling

Leander Paes/Mahesh Bhupati – 2004 Athens Olympics, men’s doubles tennis

The legendary duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati went down in the semi-final after going past pairs that included Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. The Indians lost 7(7)-6(5), 4-6, 16-14 to Croatia’s Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic in the bronze medal match.

Kunjarani Devi – 2004 Athens Olympics, women’s 48kg weightlifting

Kunjarani Devi lifted 82.5kg in snatch and 107.5kg in clean and jerk to total 190kg. The bronze medalist lifted 200kg.

Joydeep Karmakar – 2012 London Olympics, men’s 50m rifle prone shooting

After qualifying for the final round on the seventh spot, Joydeep Karmakar shot brilliantly to move up the ranking. However, a final score of 699.1 meant he could only finish behind third-placed Rajmond Debevec, who scored 701.0.

Abhinav Bindra – 2016 Rio Olympics, men’s 10m air rifle shooting

Even a former Gold medalist and eminent shooter Abhinav Bindra missed it in 2016.

The rifle marksman ended fourth on the leaderboard after a shootoff where he shot 10 and rival Serhiy Kulish of Ukraine shot 10.5.

Sania Mirza/Rohan Bopanna – 2016 Rio Olympics, mixed doubles tennis

The fourth-seeded Indian pair of Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna lost in the semi-final of the mixed doubles at Rio 2016. A bronze medal could have been added to India’s tally, but Sania-Rohan went down to Radek Stepanek and Lucie Hradecka 6-1,7-5.

Some info and anecdotes from Tokyo2020
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India’s Golden Boy Neeraj Chopra is one of those who perform best under pressure. Most of his major successes came from mega events.

This is largely because he is ‘mentally strong’, say experts.
- Chopra’s first success came when he was 18 years old winning Gold five years back at South Asian Games by his throw of 82.23 m.
- He also became under-20 World Champion in Poland with the throw of 86.48m.
- When he was 20,  he won Gold at Asian Games and Commonwealth. 

- He also holds the record of becoming second Indian to win Gold in these two tournaments after Milkha Singh in 1958.

## German Javelin thrower Johannes Vetter had said in July: “I know of Neeraj Chopra from India. I am looking to throw over 90m in Tokyo, and it will be tough for Neeraj to beat me”. 

In fact, the German had thrown 96.29 m in the current season only. So, in the ultimate, it was India’s tryst with Olympic Gold and fruit of Neeraj’s hard work and passion. 

On the eventful August 7, 2021, of course his experience and skills deserted him. 

Thus, contrary to expectations, the contest between Neeraj and Vetter never really happened. Neeraj knew these and thus at the end of his historic win, he said, “even luck and days matter...Today was not just Vetter’s day”.