Book review: My Olympic Journey, your companion for Rio Games

One of the main takeaways for me from Andre Agassi’s riveting and revealing 2009 autobiography, Open, was that we, sports journalists, actually know so little about the subjects about whom we write, dissect, praise and criticize. In isolation, the Indian sporting landscape - despite being dominated by cricket - has precious little quality reading material on our country’s sportsmen and women; narrower still, personal accounts of what India’s elite athletes experience in their pursuits toward excellence are rarer.
If you’ve read Abhinav Bindra’s exceptional autobiography, A Shot at History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold, you are privileged. That aside, there are no serious or as commanding accounts of what an Indian sportsperson goes through in his or her endeavor to do the country proud. It was refreshing, thus, to dive into My Olympic Journey, a collection of personal stories from 50 Indian Olympians, which was released in the weeks leading unto the 2016 Rio Games.
The book, co-authored by journalists Digvijay Singh Deo and Amit Bose, is a rare - and at times too brief - look at what goes into an Indian Olympian’s mind before, during and after participation on the world’s biggest sporting stage. It is headlined, of course, by those who have won Olympic medals - most notably Bindra, Leander Paes, Balbir Singh, Karnam Malleswari, Gagan Narang, MC Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Vijender Singh, Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt - but some of the best reading comes in the pages which focus on those Indian athletes whose Olympic journeys did not end with medals, as well as those who have unfinished business at the quadrennial Games.
So you get to read about the schisms within the Indian men’s hockey team at the 1992 Barcelona Games that Dhanraj Pillay claims resulted in a dismal campaign - a tournament he never wants to remember - and of how he confronted captain Pargat Singh and told him, point blank, that he was responsible for a conceded goal. Shooter Joydeep Karmakar, who finished fourth in the 50m rifle prone at the 2012 London Olympics, wastes no time in admitting that he cried like a baby when he saw his compatriot Vijay Kumar on the podium. For Karmakar, like many others in the book, the distance between a medal and an empty hand was agonizingly thin.
The Rio-bound archer Deepika Kumari is driven by the shock and anger that ravaged her following a surprisingly disappointing performance in London, and how her inner “demons” can only he conquered by an Olympic medal. With the boxers, Akhil Kumar and Vikas Krishan in particular, the feeling of failure weighs heavy. As far as the straight-talking Akhil is concerned, people only remember those who win gold medals. That line stings, much like his punches must have.
Cover image of the book 'My Olympic Journey'
Among the lighter moments of the book are athletes’ reactions to time spent in various Olympic Villages, home to most contestants. Shuttler Aparna Popat remembers being in the dining hall at the Athens Games when the men’s 200m sprint winner Shawn Crawford entered and turned all heads, terming it the moment when “an athlete transcends sport and achieves immortality”. Swimmer Khajan Singh Tokas admits to being hauled up by India’s chef de mission at the Seoul Olympics for returning to the Village late at night after a night of dancing and celebrating with athletes from around the world. Gurbachan Singh Randhawa speaks reverentially of meeting the legendary Jesse Owens, whom he had the opportunity to briefly speak to in 1960.
What binds these tales of sacrifice, success and pain are the emotions that link many of these athletes and their sense of patriotism. Hockey legend Balbir Singh, who led India to a gold medal in the 1956 Games, fondly recalls how a black-and-white news reel of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, featuring the immortal Dhyan Chand, greatly inspired him towards the sport.
In one of the best-named chapters, ‘Dribbling in the Cold War’, Zafar Iqbal, who led India at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, recalls standing at the finish line of the women’s 400m hurdles when PT Usha missed winning bronze by 1/100th of a second, making it the closest-ever miss for an Indian athlete in any competition. “She still remains the queen of Indian athletes in my eyes,” says Zafar, one of the sweetest tributes from one Olympian to another.
In a rather verbose chapter, Saina speaks in depth about her journey to becoming a top-flight badminton but the real emotion only hits you towards the end, in one sentence in fact, when she stirringly speaks of seeing the Indian flag fly at the iconic Wembley Arena after she received a bronze in 2012. Randhawa - who has never entirely seen eye to eye with Milkha Singh - remembers the famous men’s 400m final in 1960 and does not refrain from reminding his more famous team-mate that he should “admit he gave the best performance of his career that day in Rome and not complain about missing out on the medal”.
One of the most revealing passages comes when Ashok Kumar, Dhyan Chand’s son, speaks of his father being against his children taking to hockey and of how he was once hit by the legend when the latter found out that he had been playing the sport. Ashok was part of the hockey team that won bronze at the 1972 Munich Olympics, but it would take three years for him to show his father the medal, out of shame.
It is also surprising to find out that Yogeshwar, a medalist from 2012, has never met the man who shaped his Olympic dreams, Leander.
The absence of Col Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, India’s first individual silver medalist, is a sore point. Rathore’s pathbreaking medal at the 2004 Sydney Games is referenced by Bindra and Saina, among others, and not reading about his Olympic journey leaves a hole in the otherwise engaging narrative.
Some personal accounts dip into almost rote rounds of thanks to sponsors and well-wishers, but that is almost expected when you consider not all of our athletes are natural speakers. The choice of images, many from the athletes’ personal collections, are value additions. One wishes there were a few more, especially from those who did not win medals.
On the whole, My Olympic Journeyis a fine account of the personal sacrifices and hardships that make up an athlete’s passage to the greatest stage in sport. Maybe next time, we can get to read about 50 more.
And yes, go India!
Title: My Olympic Journey; Authors: Digvijay Singh Deo, Amit Bose; Publisher: Penguin Random House; Pages: 376; Price: Rs 299