DRAGON SPITS FIRE

Home spectators have made their presence felt in ongoing Games with loud noise, sometimes making it hot and cold for India too

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN

POCKETS of the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Stadium started chanting as one. "Yindu Jaiyou". It roughly translates to Go India. Tejaswin Shankar was at the start of the home straight, 100m away from the finish line of the 1500m in the men's decathlon. It was the last of the gruelling 10-event discipline and the crowd cheered him on. He was in third place and was about to win silver. His main challenger for gold-China's Sun Qihao - was well in front after the first nine events. But Qihao was bringing up the rear in that same race. So, it was kind of surprising to see the spectators roar the Indian home. In the end, it didn't matter as Qihao, who finished 24 seconds behind Tejaswin, took the gold.

However, broadly speaking, the reception Indian athletes have gotten from Hangzhou and elsewhere hasn't been this warm. Tejaswin's was the exception and not the norm. When India's athletes walked out during the Opening Ceremony, the reception from the 80,000 capacity crowd was, to put it mildly, muted. Even before any of the athletes had kicked a ball in anger, there was escalating political tensions between the countries over the issue of non-accreditation to three players from Arunachal Pradesh (all of them were given stapled visas).