Majestic Bolt takes the Olympic world by storm

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Withdrawal symptoms involving the hands and the TV remote, laptop keyboard, tablets, mobile phones and other electronic devices are certain to afflict those couch potatoes who took an extra interest in the London Olympics for two weeks and more.

It was fun, there was life in it, perhaps far more than in the Beijing Games, which were exceptional in organisation but somehow did not touch the soul as this one did. Maybe, this has to do with our love for the host city, of which that supreme diarist Samuel Johnson said — “If a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”
India’s best ever performance of two silver and four bronze medals more than made up for our obsession with hockey regarding which we think wistfully that some day we can regain all lost glory. That is never going to happen as the game moved on long ago into the territory of athleticism, speed and stamina. Any amount of money spent in preparing the team is not going to change the dismal scenario. Nostalgia is not going to get us anywhere. It has not helped Brazil win any modern World Cup.
Our athletes cannot slate us anymore for an obsession with cricket, which is truly our national sport played by a majority of people in our country at some stage or other in their lives. Considering as much as Rs 330 crores were spent on preparing the 83-member squad for the Games, sportsmen who went to London should have no grouse whatever in terms of aid to prepare in the best possible international conditions ahead of the Games.
The disparity in pay is a different matter. Cricketers get to take home tonnes of money because the sport in India attracts gross revenues of a few thousand crores a year. Even as the Olympics were on, our cricket team was winning all its matches, save one, in neighbouring Sri Lanka with Virat Kohli on fire at the batting crease. Their deeds got a little less attention than normal as the focus was on the likes of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Mo Farah and, of course, the Indian contingent.
Every Olympic Day was, in fact, throwing up several heroes and heroines at a bewildering speed that it was nice to be captive to a whole new set of experiences. For sheer suspense, the women’s handball final between Spain and Korea was a gem, going right down to the wire, with the result hanging by a thread or goal as two great teams showed what the indomitable spirit of sport is all about. A medal seemed far more valuable than all the prize money that athletes take home from professional events. For instance, Usain Bolt’s three gold medals would have fetched him millions of dollars in appearance money plus prizes at any Grand Prix.
Bolt chose the simplicity of the Olympic village, living away from his entourage while soaking in the atmosphere of a great sporting movement. He was the showboat of the Games but he was the one who adopted London as his second home, winning British hearts with his ‘Mobot’ moves after the world-record breaking relay run as anchor of the speedy Jamaican team of world class sprinters. Mo Farah simply loved it, so too did a nation that saw a superstar as their son.
A total of six medals for India was the best ever, which just goes to show a lot of sport in India can grow provided they give up thinking about what cricketers earn and go about their sporting goals in the spirit of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s words etched into the wall of the Olympic stadium — “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”