Olympics and India

Mell, one of the graduate students in my department walked up to me and asked me, "Hey how did your country do in the olympics?" Now to start with its a trick question; if I had said good then he would compare it with US and if I had said bad then that wasnt the complete truth anyways. So I thought over it for a second and answered in the most diplomatic way. I said, "We performed a hell lot better as compared to our past performances."
Take a moment, think about it, did we really perform better than what we had in the past. You might say well one gold and 2 bronze, thats not much to show off. But, looking at the sports we got the medals in, you might want to say we did do good. In the past we would look up to hockey for a medal, then came Paes-Bhupati who could potentially get us a medal and thats all. This has been the scenario for India for last 50 odd years.
This Olympics surely showed us a new face of sporting in India. We got medals in shooting and boxing. Neither of those sports are our forte but we have youngsters developing interest in these sports and thats the best part. Now, we have icons like Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijendra Kumar to look at and get the inspiration from.
This is not the complete story of inspiration. Look at the games a bit more closely and you will notice we had Saina Nehwal who was just in the reach of a semi-final spot. That speaks a lot about her potential (note that she is just 19 years old). I would be surprised not to see her on the podium in 2012 Olympics. We also have weightlifters who rank well within the top 20. Not to forget the bronze medal won by Karnam Malleswari in 2000 olympics.
Well we can still crib about the track and field events but again give it a little more time and I am sure we will crack these events too.
I think instead of criticizing the sporting politics and the performance of the athletes in the Olympics we should take positive notes about the increasing number of sports we are trying to leave our mark on.
I think Mell's question made me look at India's performance in Olympics in a positive manner.