Paris Olympics: Mirabai Chanu joins 4th place heartbreak club with members like Abhinav Bindra, PT Usha and Milkha Singh

Paris Olympics: Lakshya Sen became the fifth Indian in 2024 to feature in this list of fourth place finishing Indian athletes at an Olympics, besides Joydeep Karmakar, Olympic champion Abhinav Bindra and Arjun Babuta.

Mirabai Chanu Saikhom of India competes during the women's 49kg weightlifting event at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu joined the athletes finishing just short of the podium as she was adjudged fourth in Women’s 49kg weightlifting event at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday night.

Earlier in the week, Indian shooters Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka finished fourth in the Skeet Mixed Team event behind China while Star shuttler Lakshya Sen then joined the duo as he went down to Malaysia’s Lee Zii Jia in the men’s badminton singles bronze-medal match.

Last week, Manu Bhaker ended fourth at the 25m pistol event after a heart-stopping shoot-off on Saturday against Veronica Major. Manu Bhaker was on the verge of becoming the first Indian to win three Olympics medals in individual events. In fact, no Indian athlete has ever won three individual Olympic medals across Olympics, and Manu Bhaker was a couple of shots away from breaking that record in just one Olympic Games.

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But it was not to be, as Manu Bhaker ended in the fourth-place club. Manu Bhaker is the fourth shooter to feature in this list of fourth-place finishing Indian athletes at an Olympics, besides Joydeep Karmakar, Olympic champion Abhinav Bindra and Arjun Babuta.

It’s a club that counts the likes of Olympic champion Abhinav Bindra, Olympic medallist Leander Paes and certified legends of Indian sport like PT Usha and Milkha Singh as its members. Yet, it’s also one club that no Indian athlete would want to be a part of.

Paris Olympics: Indian archers Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara missed out on a bronze medal for India at the Paris Olympics on Friday. (PHOTO: AP)

Indian archers Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara missed out on a bronze medal for India at the Paris Olympics on Friday. (PHOTO: AP)

It’s this club that archers Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara joined at the Paris Olympics after losing in the bronze medal match to USA’s Brady Ellison and Casey Kaufhold. The Indian pair had lost in the semi-finals against South Korea’s Lim Sihyeon and Kim Woojin.

Rifle shooter Arjun Babuta had also ended just outside the medal places in the men’s 10m air rifle event at the Châteauroux shooting range in France earlier at the Paris Olympics.

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Babuta was consistently in the medals spots but with medal within sight, his final shot was a 9.5, that saw his campaign end empty-handed.

Babuta had already endured heartbreak in the 10m air rifle mixed team event earlier in what is his debut Olympics, after he and his partner Ramita Jindal had finished sixth.

Full list of Indian athletes finishing fourth at Olympics

Babuta is the third shooter to feature in this list, besides Joydeep Karmakar and Olympic champion Bindra.

ATHLETE/TEAM NAME	OLYMPICS EDITION	SPORT	DISCIPLINE
Randhir Shinde	Antwerp 1920	wrestling	men’s 54kg freestyle
Keshav Mangave	Helsinki 1952	wrestling	men’s 62kg freestyle
Indian men’s team	Melbourne 1956	football	men’s football
Milkha Singh	Rome 1960	athletics	men’s 400m
Prem Nath	Rome 1972	wrestling	men’s 57kg freestyle
Sudesh Kumar	Munich 1972	wrestling	men’s 52kg freestyle
PT Usha	Los Angeles 1984	athletics	women’s 400m hurdles
Rajinder Singh	Los Angeles 1984	wrestling	men’s 74kg freestyle
Leander Paes/Mahesh Bhupati	Athens 2004	tennis	men’s doubles
Kunjarani Devi	Athens 2004	weightlifting	women’s 48kg
Joydeep Karmakar	London 2012	shooting	men’s 50m rifle prone
Abhinav Bindra	Rio 2016	shooting	men’s 10m air rifle
Sania Mirza/Rohan Bopanna	Rio 2016	tennis	mixed doubles
Dipa Karmakar	Rio 2016	gymnastics	women’s vault
Aditi Ashok	Tokyo 2020	golf	women’s individual
Indian women’s team	Tokyo 2020	hockey	women’s hockey
Arjun Babuta	Paris 2024	shooting	men’s 10m air rifle
Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara	Paris 2024	archery	mixed team archery
Manu Bhaker	Paris 2024	shooting	women’s 25m pistol
Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka	Paris 2024	shooting	Skeet Mixed team
Lakshya Sen	Paris 2024	badminton	Men’s singles
Mirabai Chanu	Paris 2024	weightlifting	Women’s 49kg