India starting to stun the world

There was a time when an Indian doing well in a world championship of any sport was such a rarity that he or she would have dominated the news cycle for the next few days. If the last month was any evidence, those days are long gone. Over this period, Indians have medalled at world championships in three different sports, an indication that we are evolving as a sporting nation. 

It all started with P V Sindhu winning the gold medal at the Badminton World Championships in Basel, becoming the first Indian shuttler to achieve that feat. Then, the wrestlers came home from worlds in Kazakhstan with five medals and four Olympic qualifications, their best-ever at the tournament. Bajrang Punia claimed a bronze in the 65kg category, a medal whose colour would have been different had he not been on the wrong end of a bunch of controversial decisions.

Vinesh Phogat braved a difficult draw for a bronze in the women’s 53kg category while Ravi Kumar did the same in the men’s 57kg section. Rahul Aware won the bronze in the men’s 61kg category—the non-Olympic event. The best though was an unheralded Deepak Punia storming all the way to the finals of the men’s 86kg section before being forced to pull out due to injuries sustained in previous bouts.

The boxers too weren’t to be left behind as they came back with more than one medal from a men’s world meet for the first time ever—Amit Panghal netted a silver while Manish Kaushik won a bronze.  That the boxing world championships is not an Olympic qualifier is a small but negligible glitch. Add to this Mirabai Chanu narrowly missing out on a bronze in the weightlifting worlds and the shooters gunning down World Cup medals over the past few months, and a rosy picture emerges. That this comes ahead of an Olympic year raises expectations—every edition of the extravaganza ends with social media statisticians laughing at India’s population to medals ratio. Maybe these performances are a sign that the day we set that record straight might not be too far away.