Vicious OpEd in Rediff –The Great Indian Excuses resurface.
If Anjali Bhagwat had stiff muscles, K M Binu ran with the wrong spikes, Karnam Malleswari suffered a last-minute back problem, and Suma Shirur was done in by a mental block!The exceptions were heptathlete J J Shobha, who braved excruciating pain to finish the event in eleventh place, and tennis stars Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes.
There seems to be no end to the excuses given by Indian athletes for their shoddy performances at yet another Olympiad that ended last night in Athens.
Whether these were genuine reasons for their failure, only the athletes can tell. But one thing is for sure. They have got readymade excuses for every failure and it appears to come to them naturally.
Another South Asian who medaled at the just-concluded Olympics (albeit for the U.K.):
Reuters: Khan secures boxing silver http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040829/325/f1gxf.html Cuban master Mario Kindelan has met the future of boxing and has survived the experience after he outpointed British teenager Amir Khan in the highlight of final action at the Olympic tournament.
BBC: Meet GB’s Athens boxing star http://news.bbc.co.uk/sportacademy/hi/sa/special_events/boxing/newsid_3886000/3886905.stm Teenage boxing sensation Amir Khan is so young the first Olympics he can remember watching was the last one!
So more members of the Indian diaspora won medals than Indians (Bhardwaj is half, admittedly).
Additional info on Amir Khan, whose family apparently hails from Pakistan:
British boxing prodigy Khan sends ripples of glory to Pakistan http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040901/wl_sthasia_afp/oly_2004_eng_pak_boxing_040901045642
This one’s a little more of a tabloid piece:
Wonderboy Khan has bride waiting http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14587488%26method=full%26siteid=89488%26headline=wonderboy%2dkhan%2dhas%2da%2dbride%2dwaiting-name_page.html