How many Indian sports lovers have even heard of Suresh Goel? These days, he’s just the answer to a trivia question – who was India’s last men’s singles champion before Prakash Padukone won nine straight National Championships? Between 1962 and 1970, Goel took the trophy five times. But as Lakshya Sen dips his toes in uncharted waters at the Paris Olympics, it’s something else that Goel should be remembered for.
Back in 1972, in Munich, badminton made its Olympic debut, as an exhibition sport. Goel was India’s representative and the No. 5 seed. Unfortunately, he fell at the first hurdle to Sweden’s Sture Johnsson, in a competition won by Indonesia’s legendary Rudi Hartono.
By the time badminton returned to the fray as a proper medal sport, time had run out for the likes of Padukone. Instead, India were represented in Barcelona by Vimal Kumar, who exited in the first round, and Dipankar Bhattacharjee, who won a couple of matches before falling to Zhao Jianhua, the No. 1 seed, in the round of 16. Four years later, in Atlanta, he lost to Indonesia’s Heryanto Arbi.
Indonesia would spoil India’s party again in Sydney, with Hendrawan, the No. 2 seed and eventual silver medallist, putting out Pullela Gopichand in the round of 16. That was as far as Nikhil Kanetkar got in Athens in 2004, losing to Denmark’s Peter Gade.
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In Beijing, Anup Sridhar got only as far as round two, while the unseeded P Kashyap got as far as the quarterfinals at London 2012 before being outclassed by the great Lee Chong Wei. Rio, four years later, saw even more quarterfinal heartbreak as Kidambi Srikanth took a game from the matchless Lin Dan before losing 21-18 in the decider.
But what Lakshya has done is not just improve on those performances. He’s carrying the torch for the generations who never had these opportunities, for whom domestic tournaments, modestly sponsored by local businesses, were often as good as it got. The likes of Nandu Natekar and Goel, who collapsed and died while training on the grounds of the Banaras Hindu University at the age of 34, lit the flame soon after independence, and many others, most notably Padukone, Syed Modi and Gopichand, carried it forward into the professional era.
It’s a lot easier to take up a sport when there’s an Olympic medal to aim for. For Indian badminton’s pioneering generations, there were no such incentives. Yet, they still soldiered on, laying the foundation for what the likes of Srikanth, HS Prannoy and Lakshya have built on. That epochal win over Chou Chen-tien wasn’t just his, it belonged to all those who paved the way for it.
Also Read: Paris Olympic Adventures: A Day in the Life of a Sports Journalist