As usual I woke up at 8 (very late I guess), but it was a bit different yesterday, I didn’t get up after a dream instead I woke up with a dream, a dream of a day full of medals for India at Beijing. I was eagerly waiting for Jitender and Vijender’s bouts in the evening and honestly confessing I didn’t knew anything about Sushil Kumar which is a lot embarrassing for me as I consider myself a big time sports lover.

I switched on my TV set at around 1pm and came to know that Sushil Kumar a wrestler in 66kg freestyle wrestling would be competing for Bronze shortly and believe me I was hooked on to the idiot box for next 6 hours. Sushil started his repechage against a US opponent, went on to win it then faced a wrestler from Belarus and finally defeating a Kazhak opponent to get India a Bronze. The most noticeable thing here is that all the three bouts were fought inside an hour which shows how much he must have gone through to get our country a medal. I was jumping with joy and with the knowledge that we still have two boxers to go, I then knew that this was going to be the biggest day for Indian sports.

At around quarter to 5, Jitender’s bout started. At the end of round 1 he was trailing 1-2, round two turned out to be a high scoring one and Jitender was still trailing by a point, it was the third round where he lost it via conceding 6 points to his opponent and the final round was just a formality then. It was a sad end to Jitender’s campaign just like that of Akhil but they were national heroes by then.

Vijender knew that he was the last boxer in the fray for India and he needs to come up with a victory not just for a medal but also for the development of boxing as a big sport in India and he just did that. What a performance it was, cool, composed and always in control of the game throughout the four rounds and the lad deserves all the awards that are going to come his way. Two medals in a day has never happened before for India at the Olympics, I hope this is just the beginning and we see a new era in Indian sports.