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Journalism of Courage
The 21 strides that Anju George took to reach the long jump pit last night summed up her troubles and travails, sad and happy moments over the past couple of years. Friday night at the Olympic Stadium, with a billion people watching, those same 21 strides could secure for her a medal and a permanent place in Indian sport’s Hall of Fame.
‘‘I’ve been waiting for this day for so long — now it’s just one more day left’’, she said today.
To an ordinary observer, her jump last night may have seemed over-hyped; in the blink of an eye, she had gone from run-up to arm raised in satisfaction. Was this it?
That, though, would be like approximating Irfan Pathan’s yorker to the swing of an arm, Sachin’s cover drive to the swish of a bat. It looks easy because it’s executed by a master of the art.
Yet in those 21 strides lay Anju’s nemesis of the past six-odd months. She has recently struggled to find the take-off board, a micro-millimetre’s discrepancy in her running-jumping coordination, especially in the last two strides, being the difference between a clean and a foul jump.
That was at the back of her mind last night too.
But this time the storyline changed: the same familiar flowing measured strides but no foul. She got it right, when it mattered most. And when six other jumpers in her group, including the fabled Marion Jones, had invalid first jumps.
