For success-starved India, it could be a historic first, with its contingent poised to break decades of heartbreak and disappointment
The world’s largest sporting spectacle is all set to unfold in London later today, and as always the case with the Olympic Games the eyes of the world will be on how the host city copes with the task. For over 10,000 athletes gathered in the British capital, it is an opportunity to celebrate years of preparation, sweat and toil.
For the hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide, it is a chance to watch the best of the best strut their stuff. For millions of Londoners, it will probably be two weeks of misery — as is generally the case with host cities — as they cope with life thrown out of gear.
And for once, for success-starved India, it could be a historic first, with its 81-strong contingent of competitors poised to break decades of heartbreak and disappointment, the stray medals over the years notwithstanding. Rarely has India sent such a well-prepared team to the Summer Games and what began less than two decades ago with Leander Paes’ individual bronze medal in the men’s singles tennis event at Atlanta in 1996 and picked up momentum in 2008 at Beijing, will hopefully turn into something of a medal rush. It has long been a cruel twist of irony that one of the world’s most populous nations has returned time and again with almost nothing to show for its efforts, but there is in 2012 real reason to hope that our archers, boxers and shooters, in particular, will be able to turn the tide.
At the same time, for the host nation, it will be a period of great stress alongside the pleasure of playing host to the world. To keep ever-increasing perceptions of threat to life and limb at bay, London has mounted a massive security operation, with thousands of troops and armed guards on duty, not to mention the police and other agencies tasked with keeping terror and crime at bay. On land, in the water and the air, nothing will be allowed to move without being tabbed, tracked and watched, we are told repeatedly. All of this, plus the task of managing a glitch-free Games, may seem a Herculean task, but then that is the lot of a host city. And problems there will be — no Olympic venue has escaped that. Along will come criticism and carping, and even Beijing, which produced a Games that will probably remain unsurpassed in efficiency and spectacle, had its share. As indeed did New Delhi two years ago during the Commonwealth Games. The trick lies in managing to keep all the wheels rolling in more or less the same direction.
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