It must’ve been one of those joyful five-minute intervals between lectures. A bunch of us were slouched on our desks, twiddling through our phone galleries. This was a time when WhatsApp hadn’t reached the internet and news bulletins were delivered through SMS. I heard the professor walk in, and as I was about to keep my phone away, I felt a vibration. “BREAKING: Abhinav Bindra Wins Gold Medal.”
I remember this scene so vividly because I remember completely losing cognisance of my surroundings and yelping in joy. That quizzical-astonished-judgemental look on one professor and sixty students has, for its comic value, never left me. This was the second week of undergraduate college, so no one quite knew anyone. We were all running mental auditions for prospective Maggi and cigarette companions for the next four years. That I made any friends after this incident is a miracle in itself.
**
There was something about the Olympics that drew me in very early in life. On news and sports shows, the Olympics-special segment would run for hours, so the significance and scale was very clear. Then the idea that all the world’s best athletes could come together, in the same tournament, so to speak, and basically play out a real-life version of my favourite video game, was as utopian as childish ideas get.
In school, I was terrible at athletics. Every year, when Sports Day came around, I would be the butt of all long jump and hurdle jokes in class. I participated still, naive that I was, and the adventure invariably ended with me carrying home a few bruises and a white uniform that had turned brown from all the falling and tripping. Just in case these examples weren’t telling enough — I have never, not once, won a lemon spoon race. I even raced against kids from two grades below me and still lost.
So when I saw people using a long, elastic stick to propel themselves 6 metres in the air, or run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, I developed enormous respect for them.
I had been watching other sports before I stumbled onto the realm of athletics. I love football, cricket, and tennis more than I love a lot of my friends (truth), but I’ll be honest, that love is slightly different. As a kid, I played a lot of football; and carried dreams of owning a Manchester United or an India jersey with my name on the back. My love for those sports came from a shared craft. I liked watching people do that night what I did the previous evening. Soon enough, I became engrossed in their mechanics and began to read.
With athletics and gymnastics, the admiration was, and still is, a function of awe and wonder more than anything else. I have watched every Olympic event Michael Phelps has participated in since 2004; and I don’t know the nuances of swimming any more than I know of, say, Golf — a sport I have never watched. To watch Simone Biles on a matted floor or a balance beam is to realise the true potential of physical artistry.
With time, as I grew to understand the kind of physical graft it takes to excel at athletics, I also began to appreciate the mental effort it must take. For instance, Phelps set the Olympic Record at the 100 metres butterfly event at both the Athens (2004) and the Beijing (2008) Olympics. The difference in his timing was 0.7 seconds. Usain Bolt improved 0.06 seconds on his 100m timing between the 2008 and 2012 events. Four years, more than 1400 days, more than 5000 hours of training, to shave off a physically indiscernible fraction off your personal best.
In preparation for the Beijing Olympics, Abhinav Bindra climbed a rock blindfolded. He then went to Munich to train on a 40-foot pizza pole — a method used by the German Special Forces, where the pole becomes smaller as you go higher, ending with a summit the size of a pizza box — to conquer fear.
But it’s not only the medal winners who train until they drop. Athletics, by design, demand that kind of quiet perseverance and eye for detail. In college, I had the good fortune of hanging out with an archer from Delhi. He took me along for one of his casual drills -- possibly because even a quiet presence in the corner is too loud for their meditative training. At the ground, he marked himself a shooting spot, placed a hay target board at about a 30-yard distance, and shot 40 arrows. My first instinct was to check the centre of the target. There wasn’t a single arrow that had hit the bullseye. I looked around and found a cluster on the 8-point mark. Archery being a sport where two points can be the difference between an Olympic medal and a life as a mere hopeful, I asked him what he thought about this drill. He was happy, because this drill was for breath-training — archers hold their breath for a couple of seconds before releasing the arrow — and his goal was to find a spot on the target and hit all 40 arrows on that spot. I went over to the board and realised that the entire cluster of perforations caused by those 40 arrows would fit inside a plastic bottle cap.
The more I watch sport, the more I’m convinced that the best athletes are at their greatest when no one’s recording. Like the physical chops, I wish I could have enough of their mental fortitude in me. When I practice my piano technique, I try to find pockets of space where I am tangibly improving. Maybe I won’t play this etude at a higher beats per minute just tomorrow, but I’d want to crank up the metronome next week.
During this lockdown, I have picked up the guitar. It’s a long, arduous process to learn any new skill, and I have some wisdom to tap into from my experience with the piano, but every once in a while, I find myself searching for tangible results. The monk-like determination to keep grinding without looking at the digital display is something I often envy athletes for having it run in their veins.
**
I had been looking forward to Tokyo 2020 for a while. Somehow, Japan — the land of monks and bullet trains — felt like an apt place to hold a global sporting event. If everything came together, I may even have flown down to catch a day or two of athletics and maybe some swimming. Right about now, the turnstiles at the Japan National Stadium would’ve been teeming with people hoping to grab their seats for the closing ceremony.
While all kinds of events and planning have since been tossed into the incinerator, I have been thinking of how this extra year might affect the athletes. In a lot of ways, they are machines programmed to peak at certain times. Their training schedules are designed years in advance.
But now, there is this mix of extra physical and mental perseverance that they must tap into. I think of someone like Leander Paes, 47 this year, fighting hard to get himself ready for a last stretch at Tokyo. This was going to be his farewell year in tennis. He now has to push his body for 12 more months, at an age when fatigue catches up before a game ends. He has participated in seven different Olympics, got himself a singles bronze, and won eighteen Grand Slam doubles titles for good measure. He could shut shop today and still be celebrated by everyone remotely interested in tennis.
But if athletes knew how to quit, they wouldn’t be what they are. It feels odd when Roger Federer plays Grand Slam finals at 38, or when MS Dhoni runs like a hare at 39, but absurdity is what makes champions, isn’t it? It’s what makes them stretch.
This Week:
Articles
Artificial Intelligence to help manage 250 million devotees at a pilgrimage festival? Damn straight.
Lovely story on how a kar sevak, who helped in the Babri Masjid demolition, is now working to rebuild 100 mosques
The iconic Fiat Premier Padmini, Bombay’s choice of vehicle for local taxi, is on its way out
Books
The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya: A 26-year-old cricket journalist puts cricket and journalism on pause to spend some time in Guyana. Beautiful, beautiful book. Rahul’s prose and use of imagery is just perfect.
Shows
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Netflix): Since we are talking of Tokyo, let me leave you with this documentary that profiles a legendary sushi chef, whose restaurant has only ten seats and costs $300 per plate.
Fin.