Rio 2016 | Biggest-ever medal haul beckons India's biggest-ever Olympic contingent?

3 in 2008, 6 in 2012, so 10 in 2016? Looking at how the infrastructure and support system has improved for Olympic in India, and listening to the news bytes about the success of Indian athletes at various global events, this is a reasonable assumption. The SAI is also hopeful for a double digit medal count looking at the “recent performances” of the Indian contingent. But before we get too ahead of ourselves, we must also keep in mind what India’s only Individual gold medal winner Abhinav Bindra had to say when asked about Indian’s probable medal count in Rio - “Winning a medal in Olympics is not easy to predict and is a factor of many things”. In that case, we must not predict, but we must look into those factors into play for some of the medal hopefuls.

According to me, there are 4 major factors (non-exclusive in some cases) which decide an athlete’s chance of winning a medal: 1) world ranking 2) current form 3) preparation in the lead up to the game and 4) non-participation of major competitors. We look into all these factors for some of the athletes who are billed to win a medal for sure.

First things first, let’s begin with Golf which is making its “first” appearance in Olympics since 1904. India’s Anirban Lahiri has been in superb form in the last season or two and has done things which no Indian has been able to do before in the PGA tour. But noteworthy is that his world rank is only 19 as per the International Golf Federation ranking for Olympics. In 14 PGA tour 2016 events, he has been in the top-25 only once and failed to make it to top-10 even once. In comparison, World No 1 Jason Day has been in top 10 in 6 out of the 10 events played this season. But there is a glimmer of hope. Various top ranked players like Adam Scot, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel, Rory McIlroy and Vijay Singh have withdrawn from the Olympics with a mix between the schedule and the Zika virus being the reasons. This gives Anirban Lahiri a window of opportunity, who will be well prepared for the games as it falls bang in the middle of busy summer schedule of the PGA season.

Yogeshwar Dutt, the wrestling superstar, is currently ranked 16 in the 65kg freestyle category according to United World Wresting. Although this is some way off his career best ranking of 8 achieved in Oct 2014, he is in good form having won the gold in Rio Olympics qualifying event in March.

The other athletics event to which people are really looking forward to is the 3000m steeplechase, where the news about Lalita Babar being World No 1 was widely circulated in the media a few months back. But technically she was World No 1 because she had the best timing for the 2016 season at that point of time. But her timing of 9.27 has slipped in the rankings and her compatriot Sudha Singh is also way down on the list.

Given the above facts about the various events, we can be very hopeful about a certain number of medals, but nothing can be taken for granted given the level of competition at play. On the other hand, there are other medal hopefuls like Abhinav Bindra, Vikas Gowda, Gagan Narang etc given their pedigree and experience. In conclusion, just to keep the spirits high, want to mention that Leander Paes was never ranked in top 80 in singles, yet he won the bronze medal in tennis singles for the country. We hope, stories like this inspire each of our athletes in Rio as they strive to make the nation proud in their respective events.