Can India make its presence felt at Athens 2004?

Barring the exploits of a couple of athletes, the Indians have struggled to break the shackles of mediocrity in the Olympic arena for much too long.

Weighed down by an agonising history of failures in the world's biggest sporting extravaganza, India's top sportspersons assemble in the historic city of Athens this week, determined to prevent their Olympic medal quest from turning into a Greek tragedy.

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Barring the exploits of a couple of athletes, the Indians have struggled to break the shackles of mediocrity in the Olympic arena for much too long and it would need a herculean effort from them to corner a slice of glory in the 28th edition of the Games beginning on Friday.

The last time India won a gold medal was in the Moscow Olympics in 1980, courtesy the hockey team, and it appears extremely unlikely that the the gold drought sequence could be broken in a year which sees the mega event return to the city of its birth.

India has fielded a 75-member contingent for the Games this time around but any hopes of a medal would largely rest on ace long jumper Anju Bobby George and the tennis duo of Lenader Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi.

The hockey team and the shooters have an outside chance of a medal but it would need a huge spark of inspiration to actually make it to the podium.

In the next two weeks, over 11,000 athletes from 202 nations will battle for glory and honour in 37 disciplines with powerhouses United States, Russia and China expected to do the bulk of the medal shopping in the first Olympics of the millennium.

The Indian Olympic Association has described the contingent as "the best-ever" but the question is whether they are good enough to pose any challenge to the world's top performers at a time when Indian sports has taken its first steps out from the confines of mediocrity.

The performance of the Indians in the last Commonwealth Games in Manchester and the Asian Games in Busan had been quite heartening with a record haul of medals but the Olympics is a different proposition.

The Athens-bound athletes had an extensive build-up to the Games with a number of exposure trips abroad but it remains to be seen whether the months of training could translate into a medal, a rarity for a country of over one billion population.

"No doubt,his is the best-ever contingent which will represent India and we hope that we will improve our record of medals in Athens Olympics," IOA Secretary General Randhir Singh said.

"All our efforts have been made to provide best possible training to the athletes, who have qualified for the Olympics," he said.

India, still considered pushovers at the highest level, did have their moment of glory but in the last century when it won as many as eight gold medals in hockey.

But in individual events, India has hardly been able to leave any impact with only Khashaba D Jadhav (wrestling, 1952 Helsinki), Leander Paes (tennis, 1996 Atlanta) and Karnam Malleswari (weightlifting, 2000 Sydney) managing to win bronze medals in the last 27 editions of the Games.

Norman Pritchard, an Englishman, who represented India in the 1900 Paris Olympics, gave something to the country to cheer about with silver medals in 200m and 200m hurdles.

With a bronze medal in the world athletic championship in Paris last year, long jumper Anju Bobby George will be India's main medal hope in the Games having made her presence felt in the world arena.

Anju, who will be the flag bearer of the Indian contingent, is currently ranked fourth in the world and is hoping to peak at the right time -- her event scheduled just a couple of days before the closing ceremony.

Much of the credit for the 27-year-old customs officer's rise to fame goes to Mike Powell, under whom she trained in California last year. She won the title at the Modesto relays with a jump of 6.65 m after which she was ranked 13th in the world. Then began her journey in the European circuit where she competed in a series of Grand Prix meets.

The Indian champion has quite a few rivals to beat, including Marion Jones, the American sprint ace who is under a cloud related to drug abuse. Jones seems to be in tremendous form winning the event in a pre-Olympic international meet in Germany yesterday with a jump of 6.82m.

The other notable rivals are French world champion Eunice Barber, ranked joint fourth end-July with Anju and a set of strong challengers from Russia, including world indoor champion and world number two Tatyana Lebedeva and world number one Tatyana Kotova.

In the tune-up to the Athens Games, Anju has cleared over 6.80m twice, 6.82 and 6.83m to be precise at Doha, Qatar and at Eugene, Oregon, but both the efforts were wind-assisted.

With a best effort of 6.66 m this year without the help of wind, the national record holder (6.74 m) has relied on an extensive training abroad to fulfill a long cherished dream of winning an Olympic medal.

The Indian ace has rubbed shoulders with the best in the world over the last couple of years and must be fairly confident of her own ability to withstand the pressure which would be huge in an Olympic arena.

None of the other Indian athletes have any chance at all for a medal and should be more keen to at least try and achieve their personal best. Often athletes, for some strange reason, even fail to reach anywhere near their best mark at the Games.