Mo’s lone medal Blame it on the genes!

In an Olympic gymnastics competition riddled with judging controversy, this was only a footnote. The American team lodged a verbal protest, but it was rejected and Bhardwaj went home with nothing more than the team silver the American girls had won a week earlier.

Perhaps it was fated to be so. You can escape anything but not your genes; and at Athens, Indians — even Indian Americans — seem genetically programmed to miss medals by inches. Lee-Hesh, Abhinav Bindra, Suma Shirur, the archery team; Bhardwaj, Indian by appropriation rather than passport, is in good company.

If she was upset, she didn’t show it. Her reaction, in an interaction with reporters, was philosophical, almost Gita-like: ‘‘I have no control over it (the verdict). And what I have no control over doesn’t matter — I just do my event.’’

Then she smiled, threw back her hair and summed up life, the universe and everything. ‘‘That’s the way my sport is. It’s based on what you see at a given time. Not everyone sees the same thing at the same time — by my standards this was not a medal performance anyway.’’

Bhardwaj’s floor exercise took place to a tune custom-composed for her. While it didn’t sound remotely Indian to this reporter, an American journalist asked her if it reflected her ‘eastern origins’. ‘‘Well I did want an ethnic touch to it’’, she said.

Ethnicity is, of course, what the Mohini phenomenon is all about. Indians, at home or abroad, have never excelled in gymnastics. By breaking the glass ceiling, is Bhardwaj making a broader statement? ‘‘Well I hope I’m making a statement. From my experience, Indians are very smart people. There’s no reason why they can’t be athletic.’’

Born in 1978 to Philadelphia couple Kaushal and Indu Bhardwaj — ‘‘My mother is Russian but converted to Hinduism when she married my father’’ — Mo was a natural on the dance floor. As such, the floor exercise event came easily to her.

Other than her mixed background, Bhardwaj has made news thanks to being part sponsored by celebrity fan Pamela Anderson. In 2001, she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she’s still remembered as both gymnast and inspiration.

‘‘After I finished at UCLA’’, she said. ‘‘I believe a couple of other Indian girls took up gymnastics. One of them even had my picture in her room.’’

Bhardwaj is more or less done with top-level competition. She is clear she won’t be around for Beijing 2008. Next on her itinerary is a 38-city ‘Teach Gymnastics’ tour beginning September 15. Alas, all of those 38 cities are in the United States. Li’l Mo has no plans to come to India.