Flying Finn, ballistic Beamon & Sptiz’s blitz

Flying Finn, ballistic Beamon & Sptiz’s blitz

In 1920, at the Antwerp Olympics, Paavo Nnurmi known as the ‘Flying Finn’ was pitted against a Frenchman Joseph Guillemot in the 5000 metres. Paavo Nurmi lost the race by five seconds. That was the only long-distance running event he lost in the next eight years. For years he subjected himself to endurance training in the forest of his native Finland.

American long jumper Bob Beamon, who had leapt straight into the record books with a mammoth jump of 8.90 metres in the 1968 Mexico Olympics, was one jump away from elimination, when team-mate Ralph Boston offered him a tip on his run-up. The previous record had been bettered by almost 60 cms!


Mark Spitz was often told by his father that “swimming is’nt everything winning is”. Spitz made his father proud when he won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the only athlete to ever to do so at a single Games.


The Contingent

Archery: Women’s recurve: Dola Banerjee, V Pranitha and Laishram Bombayla Devi. Men: Mangal Singh Champia.

Athletics: Ranjit Maheswari (triple jump), Vikas Gowda and Krishna Poonia (discus throw), Sushmita Singh Roy and J.J. Sobha (heptathlon), Surender Singh and Preeja Sreedharan (10,000m), Anju Bobby George (long jump), Harwant Kaur (disus), Mandeep Kaur and Manjeet Kaur (probables for 400m).

Badminton: Saina Nehwal and Anup Sridhar.

Boxing: Vijender Singh (75kg), Akhil Kumar (54kg), Jitender Singh (51kg), A.L.Lakhra (57kg) and Dinesh Kumar (81kg).

Shooting: Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Mansher Singh, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Gagan Narang, Samresh Jung, Abhinav Bindra and Sanjeev Rajput. Women: Anjali Bhagwat and Avneet Kaur Sidhu.

Swimming: Rehan Poncha (200m butterfly), Virdawal Khade (free style), Ankur Poserial (100m butterfly) and Sandeep Sejwal (100m and 200m breast stroke).

Tennis: Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Sania Mirza and Sunita Rao.

Weightlifting: Monika Devi