Setting bold new horizons for Indian women

Setting bold new horizons for Indian women

One in a year is bad enough, but one in a hundred years is a tough call. Worse, it seems unfair on all those others, whose achievements seem as good even if India have won eight Olympic gold medals besides, three silver and four bronze in a hundred years for a population which now stands in excess of a billion. But there is life beyond Olympics and medals; life for sportspersons working their way against odds, braving official apathy and every conceivable hurdle.

Even as the world marches into the third millennium, hunger and not sport is a way of life. No sports policy, no organised programmes, no facilities. For that reason alone, we must toast all those who have achieved anything meaningful. Which is why it seems even more unfair to leave out all and choose just one.

In the 100 years from the time the little-known Calcutta student Norman Pritchard unwittingly stepped into history books by competing and winning two silver medals at the turn of the last century in 1900 in the Paris Olympics, noindividual Indian sportsperson has done better. Eight different Indian teams did win the hockey gold, but only Kashaba Jadhav and Leander Paes managed individual bronze medals in the entire century. But there have been other champions: world champions, world cup champions, geniuses with a bat or a ball in their hands; geniuses with cue sticks or badminton racquets, sportsmen and women who have every now and then perked up to stand for their lot.

Tales of success alone never give the full picture. For there is only a thin line between glory and anonymity. And, written on that dotted line is many a tale of pain and strain; of the glory which even while being within the grasp eludes by that proverbial whisker.

To be that one in a hundred years; to be that one needle in the haystack and still be discovered, there has to be a certain quality. You would have to be a sport and yet be a symbol beyond sport. Be that star everyone can aspire to be. Be up there and yet close enough for anyone to be able to reach outto you. Indian sport did produce one sportsperson of that kind -- PT Usha.

USHA missed the Olympic medal by one-hundredth of a second. Yet, no other Indian sportsperson has done as much for the sport or for their ilk, as she did for the Indian woman, and not just sport. Usha went beyond sport.

A street was named after her; a train was dedicated to her. More mothers named their daughters Usha, than they will Sushmita or Aishwarya in the coming years.

Hailing from less than a modest background, Usha first came into limelight as a schoolgirl winning medals by the bagful. She was spotted and picked up by OM Nambiar, a coach with the Kerala Sports Council. Before her 16th birthday she had represented India at the Qaid-e-Azam meet in Pakistan and a year later she went for the Moscow Olympics. No heroics there, but her time came at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, where she missed an Olympic medal by one-hundredth of a second in an event -- the 400m hurdles -- she had picked up barely a year earlier.

Through themid-1980s, she was the undisputed queen of Asia. Five gold medals in the Asian Championships in Jakarta in 1985, four gold each in 1986 Asian Games and in 1989 Asians again. Now 20 years after she first ran for India she is still among the best. Now when she travels or runs, she may or may not win. Even in an atmosphere dominated by cricket, she remains the best-known name in Indian sport. Someone who is a role model and an icon of Indian sport.

-- V Krishnaswamy