Silver and steel

Ever since their origin in ancient Greece, the Olympic Games have always invited sharp questions about war and peace. In those distant times, for the duration of the competition men would lay down arms, philosophers and thinkers would congregate on the sidelines, and in this zone of calm intellectual and technological progress would be assessed. In the 2004 instalment, in Major Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s silvery first for India, this peacetime contribution by a soldier puts the army in the spotlight. In the line of duty, armypersons have notched up impressive, and soul-stirring, operations. But those contributions — those sacrifices and successes — have always been elsewhere. Perhaps that is why they so often invite just passing acknowledgement. Maybe something different is needed to drag the attention back to them, something altogether unexpected to encompass the achievements of a key institution. Maybe it needed something like Rathore’s summons to the podium at Athens’ Markopoulo Shooting Centre to frame the soldiers’ service in defending the borders and in pursuing excellence.

Not that there is anything unexpected in the marksman’s performance. Through his gold medal at the Commonwealth Games and his steady progress in training sessions, Rathore is said to have displayed uncommon focus and determination. But such has been India’s dismal experience with heightened anticipation and dashed hopes every four years, that advance audits of possible tallies are tabulated by only the very strong hearted. Indeed, before the Games began, Milkha Singh wrote in this newspaper that if India is to be rescued from athletic mediocrity, sport administration must be handed over to the army. That recommendation of danda discipline may be somewhat excessive, but accommodating and involving the armed forces in sport is a good idea.

This is not just about Rathore’s silver. The armed forces have served sport well through the years — in organising and leading expeditions in the Himalayas, for instance. And just last year the army announced Operation Olympic Medal, identifying key disciplines where Indians have potential and mapping programmes to produce medal hopes in time for the Beijing Games in 2008. And shooting was just one of them.