After 15 days of non-stop competition, frenzied passion, broken records and broken hearts, the world of sport stopped for a while -- to exhale, take a deep breath, and take stock.
For India, it was postmortem time. Athens 2004 started with a lot of promise and ended leaving the Indians frustrated and cheated. Just one silver medal to show for 75 athletes! Surely, this was not what was promised. And surely, we are capable of better? Or are we?
The Indians will always remember Athens for Major R.S. Rathore and what he did on the Markopoulo hills in the first week of the competition. The rifle shots fired on the ranges that evening were simply pure magic. There were the other braveheart too. JJ Shobha. The decathlete, showed that pain is no barrier as she ran a gruelling 800m with a strained ligament and then collapsed in a heap.
We also saw three national records in athletics. Anju George did not win a medal but finished a creditable sixth in a top class field to set a new national record. Binu K Mathews made the 400m semi-finals in a new national record -- the first time an Indian had broken Milkha Singh's record abroad.