House Of Commons

For a nation used to so-near-and-yet-so-far stories, this sounded too good to be true. Gold medal after gold medal. Many of them from unexpected quarters. If the shooters were bent upon erasing memories of a campaign gone wrong at the World Shooting Championships in Finland less than a fortnight earlier, Indian women weightlifters led by N. Kunjarani Devi seemed intent on making the Manchester Commonwealth Games their own. At the end of it all, the tally was a best-ever haul of 32 golds and an unprecedented overall third place.

Then, just as the curtain was about to fall on the Games, came the stunner—a doping scandal in the Indian camp. First Krishnan Madaswamy and then Sateesha Rai, both lifters. Two gold, three silver and a bronze medal had suddenly turned to dust and India slipped to fourth place. Worse, Indians were the only drug cheats of an otherwise-friendly and pleasant games.

But, for the better part of the Games, it was a terrific high—of the legit sort. Shooting, with 14 golds, and weightlifting provided the bulk of the gold medals, with wrestling chipping in another three. The two other golds were among the most notable performances of the Games. First the women's hockey team braved some atrocious umpiring decisions and swept past some of the powerhouses of world women's hockey, including Australia, New Zealand and England. And then there was the young Qamar Mohammed Ali, who became the first Indian pugilist ever to pick up a Commonwealth Games boxing gold.

Meanwhile, Anju Bobby George and Neelam Jaswant Singh won a bronze and silver each in the women's long jump and discus respectively. It was special since this was the first time Indian women athletes achieved a podium finish at the Games, and athletics, unlike some of the other disciplines at Commonwealth Games, is as close to world class as it can be outside of the World Championships or the Olympics.

Any medal-starved country will go overboard at such a haul. But there is also the risk of unreasonable expectations from the same winners when they go for the Asian Games, or even the Olympics. At a time when the whole nation is cock-a-hoop, it's prudent to put the weightlifting and shooting performances in proper perspective.

For one, competition at the Commonwealth Games weightlifting championships is only of a fairly average quality. More so in the newly-introduced women's section, where China holds most of the world records. East Europeans apart, South Korea is among the other leading performers, and none of them are part of the Commonwealth. Also, India's medal prospects were done no harm by the ban on Nigeria, suspended from international competition for a year after four positive tests at the World Championships at Antalya, Turkey, last year.

And then, these were the only world-level multi-discipline games where three sets of medals are awarded in each category. Our lifters picked up three gold medals in a single category—N. Kunjarani in 48, Sanamacha Chanu in 53 and Shailaja Pujari in 75 kgs bagged three golds each. Similar finishes in most other competitions would have fetched them only one gold each, for the total. Again, Pratima Kumari's two golds would have counted as only one for the overall—she finished second in snatch in the 63 kg category. At most other platforms, the Indian women's haul would have read four golds, and not 11 as it was at Manchester.

And shooting? The abysmal performance at the World Championships in Lahti, Finland, prompted the sports ministry to ask the Indian Olympic Association to trim the shooting squad. Now, with a haul of 24 medals, including 14 golds, from 23 shooters, such a request, in retrospect, looks unjust. But the truth is that once again China, South and North Korea, who boast of some of the best marksmen in the world, weren't there at Manchester.The high-profile Jaspal Rana is among the world's best in centre-fire pistol and standard pistol, but these are not Olympic events. And Rana struggles to find his feet, nay targets, in air pistol. Four more golds at Manchester make him one of the most successful Indian sportspersons in the history of Commonwealth Games, considering he won four golds earlier in '94 and '98. But his chances to finish at the podium at the 2004 Athens Olympics remain to be seen. However, Anjali Bhagwat, the only Indian woman to reach an Olympic shooting final, is good news. Four gold medals, including two individual ones in women's 10m air rifle and 50m rifle 3-positions, make her a prospect for the Busan Asian Games and the Olympics.

Another hero of the Indian contingent was the young Qamar Mohammed Ali who captured the boxing gold in style, making up five points in the final round against the UK's Darran Langley in the light flyweight final.

But the 14-member badminton squad, which did so well four years ago, disappointed this time. P. Gopichand's quarter-final exit, and the change in rules of the team championships—which now required the men's and women's matches in a single tie—meant Aparna Popat's bronze medal was the only one India could boast of in the discipline.

Nonetheless, the government has responded well by increasing the cash rewards. In one single swoop, Union sports minister Uma Bharati, seemingly carried away by the success, announced that the gold medals would now be worth Rs 20 lakh, silver Rs 15 lakh and bronze Rs 10 lakh each. That sure is a tidy amount, and no longer should there be cries of poor rewards. All that we need now are performances, at platforms more competitive, read tougher, than the Commonwealth Games.