London, August 13
Eight years ago, when Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won a silver medal in the double trap shooting event at the Athens Olympics, India was stunned, shocked. We had given up hopes of our athletes winning a medal at the Olympic Games a long time before that.

It’s a measure of India’s progress over the last eight years that six medals at London 2012 seem a bit inadequate - we’re disappointed because the total, with a bit of luck with our boxers, could well have been eight or 10. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering number, but to those of us who grew up in the barren 1980s and 1990s, it’s almost incredible. Hopes of a total of six or eight or 10 medals at the Olympic Games was a sad lie then, a horrible joke when the US and USSR were racking up 80-plus gold at one go. We were no-hopers, especially in individual sports.

Actually, that’s always been true about India at the Olympics. Never before Beijing had India won more than one Olympics medal at a single event. We’d only once before won two medals at the Olympics - 56 years ago, at Helsinki. Before Beijing, India had won a grand total of four individual Olympics medals, from 1928 to 2004. Now we’ve got six - yes, you children of the 1980s, six - individual medallists at the Olympic Games. No gold this time, but it’s clear that progress has been made.

Gagan Narang, long the bridesmaid, set the ball rolling on July 30 in difficult, noisy conditions shooters are unused to and dislike. Narang, who had every conceivable medal in his cabinet except at the Olympics, went to the final of the 10m pistol event with 598 points, one behind joint leaders Alin George Moldoveanu or Romania and Italy’s Niccolo Campriani. In the final, contested by eight shooters, Narang had scores of 10.7, 9.7, 10.6, 10.7, 10.4, 10.6, 9.9, 9.5, 10.3 and 10.7. A total of 701.1 out of a maximum possible of 709. That got Narang a bronze, beating Wang Tao of China by .7 of a point.

Shooting got India their second medal too - Vijay Kumar, Armyman and shooter, multiple medallist at events around the world. Now and Olympics silver medallist. The quiet, unpretentious Himachali won the silver medal in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol event on August 3. It’s a difficult event that’s contested over two days. With his 293 on the second stage of qualifying, he made it to the final on the fourth place with 585 points.

In the final, six finalists had to fire 40 times, in eight series of five shots each. Vijay Kumar hit the target 30 times in 40 shots, displaying great consistency with series scores of 5, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4, 4 and 2. It took a world record, by Cuba’s Leuris Pupo to relegate the Indian to silver.

Saina Nehwal is just 22, yet people were already wondering if London 2012 was her last chance to win an Olympics medal. Four years ago at Beijing, she’d lost a close match in the quarterfinals. Then we said oh, she’s only 18, she’ll win an Olympics medal yet.

Now, the Olympics medal seemed to be slipping out of her grasp. She’d had a great year in 2010, but 2011 was not quite so good, and 2012 had been disappointing before she won titles in Singapore and Thailand. But were the three Chinese girls in London going to deny her? It did seem possible.

Saina lost to Wang Yihan, the world No. 1 in the semifinals. She did have a crack at a medal when she faced Wang Xin in the bronze medal match on August 4. Saina started well, leading 3-0 and then 5-2. Then Wang struck like lightning - suddenly, hard and fast. With a string of crosscourt drops that stunned Saina, Wang inexorably went into the lead. Saina began to make mistakes and in the blink of an eye, was down 6-14 in the first game. She fought back hard, taking 12 of the last 19 points, four in a row to make it 14-18.

At 17-20, Wang had fallen down to the ground as she moved backward - she got her left knee bandaged and returned to the middle five minutes later, smashed down Saina’s serve to win the game. But she was in pain and, having won the first point of the second game, Wang said she couldn’t go on. Not the best way to win an Olympics medal, admitted Saina, but added: “I was confident, I was coming back strongly and she was tiring.”

The fourth medal - India’s new record for number of medals at the Olympics - came through another strong lady, MC Mary Kom, on August 6. On that day Mary reached the final after giving Tunisia’s Maroua Rahali a lesson in boxing. Mary, who had beaten Poland’s Karolina Michalczuk 19-14 in the first round, moved into the semifinals when she thrashed Rahali 15-6 victory. She was now assured of a bronze at least.

With the introduction of women’s boxing here, London was the first and perhaps last chance for Olympics glory for Mary, five-time world champion and mother to twin sons. She did try her best in the semifinal two days later, but Nicola Adams, who eventually won gold, was too good for Mary.

Yogeshwar Dutt became India’s fifth medallist on August 11 - a worthy man, a winner of an Olympics medal. Dutt overcame crushing disappointment, his lot after he’d lost to Besik Kudukhov of Russia in the pre-quarterfinals of 60kg freestyle wrestling. Kudukhov is a little tower of power, quick and strong. Dutt had the misfortune of a bout with him that early in the tournament, and the Indian fought well but lost to a superior fighter.

When Kudukhov entered the final, Dutt got a chance to fight for bronze. To win it, he Dutt had to win three repechage bouts in 58 minutes. He did that, stunning North Korea’s Jong Myong Ri in the bronze medal match with a twisting move around the mat - Dutt the winner 1.02 minutes into the third period of the bout. Then Dutt flipped, somersaulting on the mat to celebrate his bronze.

Sushil Kumar, Dutt’s good mate, practically his brother, won India’s second silver on August 12, the last day of competition. His two medals in consecutive games have immortalised Sushil. Sushil reached the final of the 66kg class with tough wins over former world champion Sahin Ramazan of Turkey, Uzbekistan’s Ikhtiyor Navruzov, and Akzhurek Tanatarov’s of Kazakhstan in the semifinals. A silver was certain at worst. But Sushil was going for gold. But Japan’s Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu outclassed Sushil in two periods. Sushil, apparently suffering from dehydration and bad stomach, was unable to compete with Yonemitsu, Asian Games gold winner.

So silver it was for Sushil, to take India’s medal count to an unprecedented six, and make the Najafgarh wrestler a legend in his lifetime.