7th Aug 2021 11:08:PM Editorials
Eastern Sentinel Arunachal News

In most parts of the country on Saturday, due to the prevailing monsoon the sky as usual was gloomy. However, thousands of kilometers away in Tokyo, the capital city of the Land of the Rising Sun, the sun shone in its brightest way for India. Neeraj Chopra, the 23-year old javelin thrower from a Haryana village scripted history by winning India’s first athletics gold in the Olympics. The wait for an athletics gold was indeed long, actually a century-old and the rare moment of glory is something extra special to relish upon by the 135+cr populace. It’s an extraordinary achievement and the joy with its 24-carat purity that will now intoxicate the nation for the next few days is something that many ‘other game(s)’ having the privilege of enjoying unbridled blessings of money and media can’t supply. Indians do have the ability to deliver top performance at the toughest of competitions-this has been proved many a time and Neeraj has endorsed it in a best-possible way.
In the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, PT Usha, the iconic sprinter of that era missed bronze by nano seconds and if memory doesn’t betray, the nation plunged into a deep sorrow then. Before this, in 1960 Rome Olympics it was a similar ‘near miss’ by Milkha Singh. These ‘so near yet so far’ experiences were strong pointers that talents are there and waiting to be nurtured. Any nation giving serious priority to such individual games and sports would have taken the failure as a signal to chart out course correction measures and as experiences show, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of editions of Olympics to turn the tide and rise in the slippery ladder of medal hunting. However, in India’s case, the negative had happened over the decades and in an individual event, the last gold came in the 2008 Beijing games when shooter Abhinav Bindra bagged it. Neeraj’s case will once again reiterate that talents, however A-class they may be, need to be polished before gathering rust. While in-born talent is always a factor in such individual games, it’s undeniable that but for the prolonged support from government that comprised financial assistance for procurement of sports gear and recovery equipment, hiring of bio-mechanist expert for training and foreign exposure and many such facilitating measures, it wouldn’t have been possible for the Haryana lad to bring the highest glory to the nation. In the Tokyo games, except for Hockey, all medals have come in individual categories. Mirabai Chanu, Lovlina Borgohain, Ravi Kumar Dahiya and Bajarang Punia may have missed the gold, but the message is clear.
Government(s) must patronise such talents all throughout their sporting careers. Undoubtedly, there are thousands of Neeraj Chopras, Mirabai Chanus, Lovlina Borgohains, Ravi Kumar Dahiyas and Bajarang Punias waiting to be spotted. 


Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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