Sport give us unbelievable highs; it also gives us depressing lows. One man's triumph is another man's heartbreak. It has moments of possibilities which can make one hero for a lifetime or can mark others as underachievers forever. How does it feel when you slip from winning an Olympic medal by 1/100th of a second?
Gold, silver, bronze all get a prize, but finish fourth and you go home with nothing.
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"Fourth is the worst place you want to finish," said British diver Peter Waterfield, whose single mistake in the 10-meter synchronized platform competition knocked him off the podium at the 2012 London Olympics. "I would rather finish last because at least you know that you missed every dive."
"Fourth seems like it would be nice," said U.S. cyclist Taylor Phinney who finished fourth in both of his events in London 2012, "but it's the worst place you can imagine at the Olympic Games. If you were going to tell me that I got a fourth at the Olympic Games twice two months ago, I'd have been like, 'Damn, that's impressive.' Now that I'm here, and I'm actually the guy getting fourth place, that's nice. But it was so close, s-o-o-o close.''
The agony of being close yet far.
Here is a list of Indians who missed out on an Olympic medal finishing fourth.
#1 Randhir Shindes in Antwerp, Belgium, 1920
This was the first time India as a team was competing in Olympics unlike 1900 Paris games where Norman Pritchard was the sole representative. It was an eight-member contingent comprising of 6 athletes and Sohrab Bhoot and AHA Fyzee, who served as managers for the team.
Shindes participated in Men’s Featherweight 60kg Freestyle Wrestling event. In the round of 16, he got a bye against Johnson of USA. He won his quarter-final bout against Henry Inman for Britain but lost to Samuel Gerson of USA in the semifinals and then lost to Philip Bernard of Great Britain in the bronze medal match.
#2 Indian Men’s Football Team in Melbourne, Australia, 1956
Interestingly our men’s football team made to the semifinals in Melbourne Olympics. Inida beat Australia 4-2 in quarterfinals as Neville D’Souza became the first Asian player to score a hat-trick in an Olympic Games scoring three of the four Indian goals. In fact, D’Souza was almost there in giving Indian the lead in a goalless first half in the semifinal against Yugoslavia but in the second half Yugoslavs proved too strong and India went down 1- 4 when the final whistle blew.
D’Souza scored the lone goal for India in the 52nd minute, to give India a 1-0 lead, but then thye crumble.
"We defeated Australia 4-2 in the quarter-finals. Neville scored a hat-trick in that match. We went down 1-4 to Yugoslavia (in semifinals) despite Neville giving us the lead,” team member PK Banerjee once said, recollecting Indian football`s finest hour. Bulgaria beat us 3-0 in the bronze medal classification match. The team consisted of all time Indian football greats like PK Banerjee, Neville D’Souza and Balaram. D’Souza also became the joint top scorer with Todor Veselinovi of Yugoslavia and Dimitar Milanov of Bulgaria, all of them scored 4 goals.
#3 Milkha Singh in Rome, Italy, 1960
Milkha Singh, ‘The Flying Sikh’ finished ‘Men’s 400 m’ finals in fourth position with a timing of 45.6 secs and lost the bronze medal by just 0.1 sec to Malcolm Spence of South Africa who clocked 45.5 secs. This was one of biggest regret in Indian sporting history and arguably the most disappointed moment till now in Indian track and field history. Milkha was tipped to win a medal and was seen as the only challenger to Otis Davis of US.
He led the first 250 m of the race but just slowed down to see his fellow competitors and this error cost him the race. "Since it was a photo finish, the announcements were held up. The suspense was excruciating. I knew what my fatal error was: After running perilously fast in lane five, I slowed down at 250 meters. I could not cover the lost ground after that -- and that cost me the race. After the death of my parents, that is my worst memory. I kept crying for days," Singh said. In fact, Singh almost gave up sport after this defeat but after a lot of persuasion, he took the track again to win two gold medals in 1962 Asiad. By then he was much beyond his prime.
#4 Indian Women’s Hockey Team in Moscow, Russia, 1980
It was our women’s hockey team’s first Olympic appearance and we had a huge chance to make it to the podium as top teams like Netherlands, West Germany, USA, Australia and Great Britain boycotted the Games. India started off well by beating Poland and Austria by scoring six goals and conceding none. But a 0-2 defeat against Czechoslovakia and a 1-1 draw against Zimbabwe (who were eventual champions), India lost the plot.
India’s last match was against USSR where just a draw could have assured the team a bronze and a win could even have gotten them a silver. However, the Blueskirts lost their nerves and lost the match 1-3 to USSR. As a result, the Indian women finished fourth behind Zimbabwe, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. In fact, 1980 was also the last time Indian women’s hockey team participated in Olympics and now we have qualified again for 2016 Rio Olympics.
#5 P.T. Usha in Los Angeles, USA, 1984
Finishing first in her semifinal race P.T Usha raised hope for a podium finish in ‘Women’s 400 m hurdles’, an event which was introduced in 1984 L.A. Olympics for the first time. But she lost the bronze medal by 1/100th of a second clocking 55.42 secs behind Romania’s Cristieana Cojocaru who clocked 55.41 secs. This actually is still the closest finish by an Indian athlete in an international event.
The ‘Payyoli Express’ started superbly but one of the challengers false-started and then Usha kind of lost her rhythm. Many considered the race to be a repeat of Milkha Singh's 1960 defeat in terms of an Indian finishing fourth and being deprived of a medal by a whisker. Nawal El Moutawakel a close friend of Usha from Morocco who won the gold and became the first female Olympic champion of a Muslim nation.
"That day as much as I was happy for myself, I was sad for her (P.T. Usha) because we come from countries where athletics is not that big. When she came fourth, I cried so hard. I really wanted her to be on the podium. I wanted to win but I also wanted her to win along with me," Moutawakel said about Usha at Laureus World Sports Awards 2011.
#6 Leander Paes & Mahesh Bhupathi, Athens, Greece, 2004
‘Lee and Hesh’ as they are fondly known, were seeded fifth at the start of the ‘Men’s Tennis Doubles’ tournament. They had a good start by defeating big names like Mardy Fish and Andy Roddick (USA) 7-6, 6-3 in the first round, Yves Allegro and Roger Federer (SUI) 6-2, 7-6 in the second round and then the fourth-seeded Zimbabwean pair of Wayne Black and Kevin Ullyett 6-4, 6-4 in the quarter-finals.
The Indian pair went into semis as favorites but lost to the German pair of Nicholas Kiefer and Rainer Schuttler in straight sets 2-6, 3-6. Later on, they also lost the bronze medal match to the Croatian pair of Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic 6-7, 6-4, 14-16. This was a great disappointment because they were the highest ranked team in the semifinals and did not drop a set till the semis.
#7 Kunjarani Devi, Athens, Greece, 2004
Kunjarani Devi finished fourth in ‘Women’s 48 kg Weightlifting’ category but was never really in contention for the podium finish. She was disqualified in her final attempted of lifting 112.5 kg in the ‘Clean and Jerk’ category, had she been successful, she would still have missed the bronze medal.
Devi finished with overall 190 points, 10 points behind the bronze medalist Aree Wiratthaworn of Thailand. Turkish lifter Nurcan Taylan won the gold. Kunjarani, later on won the gold medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne for 48 kg women's category and finished her career as India’s most decorated woman weightlifter but missing out on an Olympics medal will always be a regret.
#8 Joydeep Karmakar, London, United Kingdom, 2012
Karmakar had finished seventh in the qualification round of ‘Men's 50-meter rifle prone’ and moved into the finals with the top eight contenders. He finished just 1.9 points behind the bronze medal winner, Rajmond Debevec of Slovenia.
Though the man from Bengal gave a consistent performance in the final to finish fourth but he never really challenged the top three shooters much during the finals. Sergei Martynov of Belarus who won the gold also created a new world record. “I am not happy with the fourth place, but am happy with my performance,” said the Indian shooterafter the event. Expectations were the least but Joydeep proved that he was without a doubt a world class shooter.
