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4th place finishes cost India five medals
Three Indian Paris Olympians faced the dreaded fourth-place finish, missing out on medals in badminton and shooting, adding to India's Olympic heartbreaks.
It is perhaps the worst place to be in if not on the podium. An early exit can be shaken off moving forward after the initial jolt. A deeper run can be taken in stride and built upon for the future. But a fourth-place finish? That fumbling feeling with the finish line in sight?
Three Indian Paris Olympians across two events experienced it on Monday, in half an hour of heartbreaks for India about 300 kilometres apart at the 2024 Games.
In Paris, badminton hope Lakshya Sen was leading by a game and eight points to three in the second before he dramatically imploded to lose the men’s singles bronze medal match 21-13, 16-21, 11-21 to Malaysia’s Lee Zii Jia. Minutes ago, at the shooting ranges of Chateauroux, the mixed skeet team of Anantjeet Singh Naruka and Maheshwari Chauhan fell short by a solitary hit in a 44-43 defeat to China’s Lyu Jianlin and Jiang Yiting in the bronze medal playoff.
Indians have been all too familiar with the freaky fourth feeling at this Paris Olympics. A total of five fourth-place finishes featuring seven Indians have kept the country’s medal tally to three. All of them did well enough to find their way up there and remain in the mix for a crack at the medal, yet weren’t good enough to grab it when fronted up with that high pressure moment.
The spread goes from shooting to archery to badminton. It began with the men’s 10m air rifle shooter Arjun Babuta and rubbed into the mixed archery team of Dhiraj Bommadevara and Ankita Bhakat. Pistol shooter Manu Bhaker, a two-time Paris medallist going for her third, also wasn’t immune to it in the 25m final before it crept into the mixed skeet team and Lakshya.
Among them, Lakshya, 22, seemingly took it the hardest in the immediate aftermath. Lost for words he stood blank, wrapped in the blanket of regret. “Disappointed in the result,” he said, visibly dejected.
That’s a far cry from the fourth-place finishes years ago that were also celebrated in India’s Olympic history. Milkha Singh’s 1960 Rome Olympics 400m medal miss is perhaps the most revered and still talked about. More than two decades later, PT Usha would follow suit on the track in women’s 400m hurdles by one hundredth of a second. Although few and far between before this century, there have been more such in India’s sporting folklore that evoke memories of some despair but also a speck of delight.
Now, it’s largely despair. Lakshya certainly felt so. So did a disheartened Babuta who vowed to move on. Manu, a two-time medallist having gone places no Indian ever has before in these Games, still did not “feel amazing” after finishing fourth in her third event. “This could have been better,” Manu said.
The archers, though, also chose to look at it from a more positive lens. Defined by early ousters and a sense of underachievement, Indian archery produced its highest finish in Paris in the mixed team event. “It’s very disappointing when you finish one step short of a medal. But the way we’re looking at this fourth is an improvement,” Dhiraj said.
Since the turn of the century until the previous Olympics of three years ago, Indians had six fourth-place finishes across sports like tennis, shooting, weightlifting and gymnastics. That number has grown to seven so far over the past two Games. In Tokyo, golfer Aditi Ashok and the Indian women’s hockey team felt the pain of falling just shot of the mark. In Paris, far more Indian athletes know it too now.
It’s a bit of a glass half-full half-empty perspective. A larger number of Indian athletes are taking quality steps among the world’s elite competitors to get to the line beyond which glory awaits. Yet, as that line increasingly gets closer and the occasion to rise arrives, they haven’t been able to get over it.
