India’s 121-year wait for an Olympic medal in athletics ended on August 7, 2021, when Neeraj Chopra won the men’s javelin event on the penultimate day of the Tokyo Olympics. Success tasted even sweeter for a nation of 135 billion, which has been perennial under-achievers, as it turned out to be a gold medal.
Without doubt one of the greatest individual performances by an Indian sportsperson, the 23-year-old Neeraj became only the second from his country – after shooter Abhinav Bindra — to claim gold in an individual Olympic event.
Odisha Bytes picks the top 5 individual feats by Indians and ranks them as follows:
1. Abhinav Bindra — Gold medal in 2008 Beijing Olympics shooting
It’s every athlete’s ambition to excel at the Olympics, the very pinnacle of sports. Bindra will always be remembered for reaching the peak before anyone else, being India’s first individual Olympic gold-medallist by virtue of winning the 10m men’s air rifle shooting event at Beijing with a score of 700.5. The five-time Olympian, who made his Games debut at the age of 17 in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, came agonizingly close to a second medal at 2016 Rio de Janeiro only to lose in a shoot-off for the top 3 places. A World championship winner, Bindra is a four-time Commonwealth Games champion too. Bindra, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from University of Colorado, is the CEO of Abhinav Futuristics Private Limited, which works to integrate science and technology into the sport and healthcare sectors.
2. Neeraj Chopra — Gold in 2020 (held in 2021) Tokyo Olympics athletics
Even if someone from India goes on to emulate Neeraj Chopra’s Olympic feat, the javelin thrower will occupy a unique place in Indian sports history. His triumph in men’s javelin at Tokyo made the Subedar with Indian Army the first from the country to bag an Olympic gold in athletics. The unassuming but supremely confident man from Panipat was obese and weighed nearly 100 kg at the age of 13 when he threw his first javelin. Within a couple of years, he made a mark at the national level before making his presence felt on the international stage. After finishing second in the junior Asian meet, he struck gold at the World U-20 championships. He followed it up with gold-standard performances in South Asian Games, Asian Championpionships, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.
3. Viswanathan Anand – World chess champion
The first player from India to earn the title of Grandmaster in 1998, Anand sparked a chess revolution in the country and went on to establish himself as one of the all-time greats in this most cerebral sport which was dominated by Russians for a long time. A five-time World champion, the 51-year-old was universally acclaimed for his rapid playing speed. Anand won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 2000. He was crowned undisputed World champion in 2007, and went on to defend his title in 2008, 2010 and 2012 before meeting his match in young Norwegian title challenger Magnus Carlsen in 2013. One of the handful of players to surpass the 2800 Elo mark in FIDE rating, Anand was World No. 1 for 21 months.
4. Prakash Padukone — All England Badminton Championship winner in 1980
The first Indian to emerge victorious in the All England Championship — which was considered to be on a par with badminton’s world championship – Padukone beat Indonesian great Liem Swie King in the final. That was the otherwise invincible King’s only defeat in four successive final appearances. Initiated into badminton by his father, Padukone earned the rare distinction of winning the junior and senior national titles in the same year in 1972. He dominated Indian badminton in the 70s, winning the national championship seven times on the trot, and enjoyed a healthy rivalry on the international stage with the likes of King, Morten Frost and Han Jian. If the All England trophy was the crowning glory in his career, Padukone won several other international tournaments including in the 1978 Commonwealth Games and 1981 World Cup.
5. Sachin Tendulkar — Reached century of centuries in international cricket in 2012
One of the greatest batsmen of all time, Tendulkar created a plethora of records in a glittering career which spanned from 1989 to 2013. Most of those records will stand the test of time, but the one which stands out is his feat of scoring 100 international centuries – 51 in Tests and 49 in ODIs. He reached that incredible landmark in an Asia Cup match against Bangladesh in March 2012. He is way ahead of the chasing pack, with the retired Ricky Ponting having scored 71 hundreds and current Team India captain Virat Kohli currently with 70 international centuries. Having made his international debut at the tender age of 16 years and a half, Tendulkar went on to play 200 Test matches and 463 ODIs, aggregating over 34,000 runs. Staggering stats which will take some beating.
