Viren Rasquinha, CEO at Olympic Gold Quest, and former captain of India’s national hockey team talks to Abhishek Raghunath about India’s chances at London 2012:
This is absolutely India’s best contingent ever to head to the Olympics. For the simple reason that for all the Olympics I can remember, we have had a handful of athletes who have had a chance of winning the medal. This is the first Olympics that I feel, across the board, there are athletes who are genuine contenders for the medal. This is a great thing for Indian sport and a large amount of credit obviously goes to Abhinav Bindra, Vijender and Sushil Kumar. Abhinav won an individual gold medal that has never been done before in India. Hats off to him! What he did was magnificent, and how he prepared was legendary.
But I think what really has sent self belief through the ranks of athletes across the country were the bronze medals by Vijender and Sushil. Most athletes identify with Vijender and Sushil and they come from that sort of a background. And they feel that if they could do it with limited facilities, no world class facilities or nutrition etc, so can they. That has raised the performance bar for Indian athletes.
Shot Put
Vikas Gowda, three years back, he was contemplating quitting the sport. Everyone wrote him off and said that he always chokes on the big occasions. But after we [OGQ] began to work with him in 2009, he’s won medals in almost every competition that he’s entered: Asian Games (bronze), CommonWealth Games (silver), and Asian Championships (silver). At the World Championships, he came seventh. From not performing he’s come 7th in the WC. Now he’s regarded as one of the top 10 throwers in the world. This means on his day he could very well win an Olympic medal. This is from three years back where he was contemplating quitting the sport.
Boxing:
Men
I am not going to talk about Vijender here. I’ll talk about the younger boys in the team. I think Vikas Krishan has done really well. One of the smartest, most intelligent boxers, we have, and he definitely stands a good chance of winning a medal. Shiv Thapa is the dark horse. He is young and fearless. And it’s the same with Devendro Singh actually. Because they are so young, hardly 18, they haven’t fought too many senior tournaments, so there is no fear in them. They haven’t lost too much. Secondly, Shiv has fought just three international tournaments, the world doesn’t know his technique, and he has a very unorthodox technique. He fights in a way that makes opponents uncomfortable. He stands a good chance as well.