Back to winning ways after long!

It’s been a long time since I last wrote, and it’s the viral attack doing the rounds in Calcutta that’s to blame!

One boon during this period of bane was that I got to watch a lot of Olympics events which, with my normal schedule wouldn’t have been possible.

4 medals at the Olympics — our biggest haul till date and also the biggest Indian contingent! More than the number of medals what pleases me more, is the strength of the Indian contingent this year. There have been so many events to look forward to which had Indian participation. Maybe we weren’t good enough to storm the finals and get medals but we were good enough to have qualified at the Olympic level!

If we have a Mary Kom fighting it out in the boxing ring, we also have a Tintu Luka in the 800 m semi-finals of athletics, Sahana Kumari for high jump, Renjith Maheshwary for triple jump, and add in a few more for shot put, discus throw, rowing, tennis, badminton, shooting, archery, hockey to name  a few!

It’s good to see a cricket-crazy nation go crazy for other games too! Today, we see players like Parupalli Kashyap, Vijay Kumar, Devendro Singh, MC Mary Kom, Krishna Poonia make the headlines. Normally, we have to scrounge through the sports pages to even find their mention!

Along with the spectacular and stellar performances on one hand, we’ve had to see major upsets too. The tennis contingent, hockey team, Deepika Kumari - led archery team, Vijender Singh, Sushil Kumar, and Abhinav Bindra. The names itself recall those dreams of victories that have been shattered!

But we’ll take it all in true sportsman spirit and applaud the efforts of the Indian Olympic contingent for having managed to qualify at the world level and keep India’s flag flying high! Let’s hope we end 2012 Olympics on an even higher note and prepare for a bigger and better show at the Rio Olympics!

Till then, back to London!