Rema Premnath (1985)
This is the story of how a budding athlete, possibly a Neeraj Chopra in the making, missed a silver medal by one centimetre, and later just missed the opportunity to represent the country at the Olympics due to some political intervention….well, not really. How I wish it were at least half dramatic as that!
Let me take you to a time long ago, the first half of the Eighties, when I was an undergraduate student at REC Calicut. The year was 1982-83, and the Inter-batch sports competitions were on. Over a period of two weeks or so various competitions were held between batches. The games were conducted during either early mornings or in the evenings after classes on working days, and finally there was the sports day, a full-day event held at the cricket ground in Chathamangalam.
Even though it was fun all the way, the girl students found it a little bit tricky too. That was because we were few in numbers and except for one or two in each batch there were no real athletes. And in every batch there will be at least a few who would rather die than get on to the sports field. So we had to form teams from the available members for all the team events. Thus more or less the same teams played kho-kho, kabaddi, basket ball, hand ball and what not.
On sports day the competitions were mainly in athletics, that is track and field events. No individual could participate in more than four events. From our batch, the two girl athletes worth their salt, Latheefa Banu and Susan Jose, participated in four events each, of their choice, and won prizes too. But still there were too many events for which some of us either volunteered or were pushed by the others to compete. I flaunted my running skills in a couple of sprint events, and needless to say, ended up in the ‘also-ran’ bracket.
And then came the announcement for the event ‘javelin throw for girls’ and the names were being called out. I was standing among the spectators cheering my batch mates competing on the track. To my horror, our Team Captain, Mohamed Salim, walked up to me and announced: “I have given your name for javelin throw.” I protested, “But I haven’t held a javelin….” But he will have none of it. “Come on, I will teach you,” and teach he did. An athlete of enormous talent, he made it look very simple. Then he explained the rules. And one rule that I didn’t know of was that, to be counted as a legal throw, the javelin should land tip first. Sounded simple enough till I actually attempted my first throw. But of course you don’t get everything right on your first attempt, I told myself.
There were around ten athletes in the starting line up. “Five minutes for practise”, announced the official and each of us got one or two throws. Then the actual competition began. There were three rounds, and the names were called in the order of registration, myself being the last in each round. What actually happened there was a live demonstration of how many different ways a javelin can land other than on its tip. We all took long run-ups got the grip as perfectly as we could and threw with all our might … and willed and willed that the javelin will somehow turn mid-air and land on its tip. But probably all the laws of kinetics and gravity were colluding to let us down. Throw after throw was the called ‘foul,’ and it was as if the field judge was always holding the red flag up (or had he even forgotten to bring his white flag at all?)
There were two girls in the fray who had some experience in throwing and they easily walked away with the first and second prizes. And when my turn came in the third and final round, which also was the last throw of the event, I suddenly realised that the bronze medal spot has not been claimed yet. I just needed to produce a legal throw; distance was not an issue. So I just did that. I avoided the run up, stood my ground, held the javelin the tip pointing downward a little, and threw it as carefully as possible so that the tip landed first. I think the distance was even less than ten meters, but up went the white flag! The throw was recorded as legal. I had added one precious point to my team tally.
Soon I was standing on the podium with the bronze medal around my neck. Believe it or not, we had Olympics-style victory ceremonies for each event, sans, of course, the National anthem and the photos with the athletes kissing or biting into their medals. But we did not get to keep the medals. Actually there was only one set of medals which by rotation was presented to all the winners. But we were presented with certificates during the ceremony. Luckily for me, the distance was not mentioned in there; otherwise I would have been holding the world record for the shortest distance for a bronze medal winning throw in any athletic competition ever.
We work hard for some medals, but some just come our way…
Decades later, looking back to that moment on the victory stand I don’t really feel proud. It was cheating for sure. Of course, I didn’t cheat the officials or my fellow competitors. However, in my eagerness to produce a legal throw, I had cheated the spirit of the sport: Shouldn’t I have strived to uphold the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter”?
