India's 'best ever' aim to create history in London

London, Jul 26: Armed with a new-found self-belief, India's top athletes will seek to script a fresh chapter in the country's Olympic history as they go into the 30th edition of the sporting extravaganza, London Olympics 2012, from Jul 27, Friday with a realistic chance of winning medals.

Never before has an Indian contingent raised so much expectations and London could just be the launching pad for a new sporting era.

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In the coming days, a record number of 81 Indian athletes, the highest in any Olympics so far, will take part in 13 disciplines with serious medal prospects in archery, boxing, shooting, badminton, tennis and wrestling.

Barring the archers who begin their campaign on Friday, most of the other Indians will join the action after the Opening ceremony in which Beijing bronze medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar will be the contingent's flag-bearer.

For long, the Indian athletes have struggled to break the shackles of mediocrity and boost the country's measly individual medal collection in the Olympics until the Beijing Games brought about a remarkable turnaround four years ago.

The platform for this transformation was first laid by shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore who clinched a historic silver medal in the Athens Games in 2004.

Shooter Abhinav Bindra's gold medal and the bronze medals by boxer Vijender Singh and Sushil in Beijing were refreshing changes from the agonising history of failures in the world's biggest sporting extravaganza.

The three who brought laurels for the country in Beijing will again be the spearheads of India's medal quest while shooters Ronjan Sodhi and Gagan Narang, shuttler Saina Nehwal, woman pugilist Mary Kom, archer Deepika Kumari and her team-mates, are also being touted as medal contenders.

It remains to be seen whether the hype and expectations surrounding the contingent was indeed justified and whether the athletes can improve upon their Beijing medal tally.

In the next two weeks, about 11,000 athletes from 204 nations will battle for glory in 39 disciplines with powerhouses United States, China and Russia expected to do the bulk of the medal shopping in the third Olympics of the millennium.

The preparations for London had started long back for the Indians, most of whom had gone for prolonged training sessions abroad. That has largely been possible because of increased government and private funding that has been given to the top stars, state-of-the art training facilities and world-class competition abroad.

The government had earmarked $50 million (Rs 2.3 billion) - a 10-fold increase from 2000 - for preparing the contingent for the London Olympics under its "Operation Excellence" programme.

Lakshmi Mittal's Mittal Champions Trust and the Olympic Gold Quest, founded by badminton star Prakash Padukone and billiards great Geet Sethi, have also spent big on the athletes.

"No doubt, this is the best-ever contingent which will represent India and we hope that we will improve our record of medals in London Olympics. We have high hopes and we are confident of doing well," IOA Secretary General Randhir Singh said.

"All efforts have been made to provide best possible training to the athletes, who have qualified for the Olympics," he said.

India, considered relative pushovers at the highest level until not too long ago, did have moments of glory in the Olympics when the country won as many as eight gold medals in hockey.

But in individual events before Beijing, India could hardly make any impact with only Kashaba D Jadhav (wrestling, 1952 Helsinki), Leander Paes (tennis, 1996 Atlanta) and Karnam Malleswari (weightlifting, 2000 Sydney) managing to win bronze medals. Shooter Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore then made history by clinching a silver medal in the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Norman Pritchard, an Englishman, who represented India in the 1900 Paris Olympics, gave something to the country to cheer about with silver medals in 200m and 200m hurdles.

But this time around, there are many who can steal the spotlight and with a little bit of luck even a couple of gold medals could come India's way.