Rio Olympics: Wake Up Call For Cricket -Crazy Nation

The Indian achievement at Rio may seem insignificant, but our athletes are marking their presence despite a broken system.

- Kunal Pradhan

There were several ways to watch the Rio Olympics. You could wake up early in the mornings to marvel at the two greatest athletes in history, Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, as they pushed the boundaries of human excellence in the winter of their careers. You could follow the medals table and wonder how the United States won across 25 disciplines, and how Britain managed to pip China in a photo-finish for second place. Or you could assiduously follow the fortunes of India’s largest-ever contingent and rue how another Games had gone by without the national anthem being played and the tricolour hoisted only on two occasions. These ways of following the Olympics were not mutually exclusive, and any superficial analysis would leave Indian fans bemoaning a series of lost opportunities. In the shadow of Phelps and Bolt, against the looming visage of the US, Britain and China, what Indian athletes did appears puny and insignificant.

No matter how much emphasis sport places on medals and podium finishes, the Olympics were always meant to create an alternative definition of the word ‘winner’. Achievement was meant to be measured in relative terms—relative to yourself, to your surroundings, to where you came from, to what you had done before—and a more nuanced study of India’s Rio adventure throws up a series of extraordinary events that shine a silver lining to our 67th place on the medals table.