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Aditya Sinha: Meta-humans ascend Mt Olympus

Updated on: 15 August,2016 07:57 AM IST  | 
Aditya Sinha |

These Games have so far been a treat, even if India is focused less on our athletes and more on Modi's cronies living it up in Rio

Aditya Sinha: Meta-humans ascend Mt Olympus

On Friday night I sat glued to my TV watching the Rio Olympics’ 20km walk. At first the athletes looked like they were running, which isn’t allowed, but their heels, in fact, touched the ground. Their hips swayed so vigorously that I told my wife they were dancing. (She scolded me for my “endless non-stop”, stopping only when I pointed out that the Chinese walkers wore red shorts which were tight in the front). The lead kept changing until the final few kilometres; several early leaders — an Englishman, a Kenyan, a Japanese — faltered and did not recover. The athletes’ faces were each a snapshot of the gruelling race they walked. Three Indians took part but two were disqualified; Manish Singh finished at 13th and though that did not win him a medal, it was still a job well done. The Chinese won gold and silver, so perhaps there was something magical in their shorts.


Sports Minister Vijay Goel poses with boxer Manoj Kumar. The minister has come under much criticism for his over enthusiasm to be photographed with Indian athletes at the Rio Games. Pic/PTI
Sports Minister Vijay Goel poses with boxer Manoj Kumar. The minister has come under much criticism for his over enthusiasm to be photographed with Indian athletes at the Rio Games. Pic/PTI 


The walk was more fun than the swimming — except for the 400m relay American Michael Phelps anchored and won. On the turn, he was underwater for an uncanny stretch of time, surfacing with the lead of what had till then been a neck-and-neck race. And to think that he champions marijuana, which usually simulates a slowdown of time. These were his last games, and we are lucky to have watched him, live.


Time was similarly Einsteinian in the 100m race heats. Each heat was expectedly absorbing until Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, took position. At the shot, the runners propelled forward like bandits, leaving the 30-year-old Bolt momentarily lagging. “The old man is hobbling along,” I told my wife, but before I finished, Bolt began to effortlessly float to the front, and before you could say “relic” he was the first person across the finish. It was a ten second race, but those final seconds seemed to unpack into an eon, as if the gravity of his superhumanity had warped the space-time continuum. If you didn’t see it live, you will never know. If you’re reading this before 6:55 am, go watch the final.

On my 100-minute evening walk, I wondered if it was possible for me to train for the 20km race. Probably. But what separates us from these Olympians — besides age — is that no amount of training would take me across the time-barrier. Perhaps I could walk it in two hours, but the Olympics-winning one hour 19 minutes was beyond my stratosphere. Similarly with the 100m race — maybe the best people I’ve met in my life could do it in 17 seconds, or even 15, but I doubt if any mortal could penetrate the time-zone within which the Olympians reign.

Other moments my heart was in my mouth was when archers Deepika Kumari, Bombayla Laishram and Atanu Das steadied their bows. A mathematician on Twitter worked out the margin of error for them. It’s less than a third of a millimetre. Yes. Plus, the wind is a rival worse than any competitor. Despite having not won any medals, our archers belong on Mount Olympus.

I probably don’t watch as much Olympics as some others, but this is still the first time in decades that I’ve watched so much of the Games, so devotedly. The last time I did so was when Nadia Comaneci wowed the world and stole my 12-year-old heart at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. As I said earlier, you had to have seen her live to really experience the magic of her gymnastics.

When US president Jimmy Carter led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games (to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the previous December), I lost interest in watching the Games, and after 1980 I got busy with high school, college and then a career. It didn’t help that Soviets in retaliation boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Games. By the next Olympics, I was back in India, busy with journalism. My interest revived during the 2008 Beijing Games, when Michael Phelps and his extra-terrestrial anatomy and his endless calorie intake featured on our Sport pages. Now that I’ve stopped being a newspaper-bureaucrat, the Games have my attention again.

It’s frustrating that Indian medal hopes have nearly vanished, especially since a new era had dawned during the Manmohan Singh years, when Abhinav Bindra won our first gold — his loss in the tie-breaker for the bronze medal in Rio was heart-breaking — and India won multiple medals. In the Narendra Modi years we hear only lip service to our athletes, while we watch Nita Ambani and Vijay Goel inexplicably dominate our contingent. For them it’s probably only about whether you win or lose, and not about how you play the game.

Senior journalist Aditya Sinha is a contributor to the recently published anthology House Spirit: Drinking in India. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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