A week of #throwbacks and anniversaries for Indian Olympians

It's been a week of nostalgia-fuelled throwbacks and anniversaries for India’s Olympic heroes.

While August 11th saw Abhinav Bindra look back on his golden moment at Beijing 2008, August 14th belonged to India’s pocket dynamo - Dipa Karmakar - who remembered the day she became the first Indian to reach the final of an Olympic gymnastics event at Rio 2016.

And it was no surprise when these sportspersons took to their social media accounts to cherish those fine moments. Here’s our pick of the social buzz from the past week...

Golden chapter

If Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore showed India’s pedigree in shooting at Athens 2004 by winning double trap silver, it was Abhinav Bindra who took it a step further with gold in the 10m air rifle at Beijing 2008.

For a man obsessed and determined to win an Olympic medal, Bindra would finally realise his dream in his third attempt at the quadrennial event.

It was not just a personal triumph. On that August day, the halls of the Beijing Shooting Range saw a nation heave a collective sigh of relief after seeing its first Olympic gold medallist in an individual event.

It’s been two Olympic cycles since that day, and India still waits with bated breath for more Indians to join Bindra in that exclusive company.

And as for the man himself, he has his eyes fixed on Tokyo 2020.

Leap of faith

Gymnastics and India don’t have a glorious history. The two are so far apart that the country had to wait till the 2010 Commonwealth Games for its first-ever medal from the discipline.

Things, however, started changing for good around five years ago.

At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Scotland,

Dipa Karmakar from Tripura managed to bag a bronze medal in the women’s vault and later went on to qualify for the Rio Olympics.

At Rio, things were no different for this diminutive athlete as she rose above the challenges to make it to the final of her preferred apparatus - the vault.

Though she failed to land a medal in the final, missing bronze by just 0.15 points, her effort to land the ‘Produnova’ in her second attempt in the final helped her add a new chapter to the recent yet interesting history of Indian gymnastics.

Books for company

If there’s something the Indian men’s hockey team goalkeeper PR Sreejesh is known for apart from his goalkeeping skills and the ability to pull a prank, then it’s his love of books.

Be it a crunch competition or his rehabilitation period, the man from Kerala has always preferred the company of books. 

And not surprisingly, things were a little difficult when Sreejesh had to sit down to pack his things before he would leave the national camp for a much-deserved vacation.