Neeraj's shadow, Manu's empty corner chair, hockey's high stakes: The burdens India's athletes carry to the Asian Games

It is very unfortunate that he is not in our team. Yes, that’s a setback.” Even as she predicted India’s track & field contingent will cross the 30-medal mark at the 20th Asian Games, Anju Bobby George, the first Indian to win a medal at the World Athletics championships, made this sobering admission.

An ankle injury has meant Neeraj Chopra, the country’s greatest ever track & field athlete, won’t have the opportunity to target a hat-trick of gold medals at AichiNagoya, Japan. In his absence, two men – Rohit Yadav and Yashvir Singh – will exert every sinew to keep India’s stranglehold in an event that will feature the reigning Olympic Champion from Pakistan Arshad Nadeem, and Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Pathirage, who has repeatedly surpassed the 90m mark this season and is the red-hot favourite.

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At high-profile, multi-discipline Games such as these, where years of toil and sweat have to bear fruit, sportspersons have to combat more than mere expectations. Quite often, there is an additional layer of pressure gnawing away at these men and women.

For Yadav (25) and Singh (24), accomplished athletes in their own right, it is the lurking shadow of a colossus. Chopra’s absence, ironically, is a presence of sorts, and both are acutely aware that failing to make the podium will lead to sneering. “Neeraj Bhai”, as he is endearingly referred to in the Indian athletics community, is an inspiration. Yet, for men like Yadav and Singh, his towering achievements also impose, unwittingly, an overwhelming burden.

HOCKEY’S HIGH STAKES

An overwhelming burden will also bear heavily on both the men’s and women’s hockey teams. Winning the hockey gold at the Asian Games comes with an additional bonus — direct qualification for the Olympic Games in 2028. The men’s team, defending champions, have to recover from an anticlimactic eighth-place finish at the recent World Cup. A dark cloud of scepticism hangs over the side, and the players will feel its probing presence in every game they play.

Their quest in Aichi-Nagoya isn’t just winning Gold and secure Olympic qualification; this team has to restore the confidence of a large following that has grown accustomed to disappointment. The women, conversely, have to sustain the energy from a memorable World Cup campaign where they finished fifth, their best performance since a fourth-placed finish in 1974.

Two years after the crushing disappointment of failing to qualify for the Olympics, this effervescent unit will be expected to continue their upward march. Defending champions China threaten to be the sternest test, and chief coach Sjoerd Marijne is sanguine after the momentum built from the World Cup surge, solemnly attempting to ease its burden on his players. “You have to close a chapter before you move to the next one,” Marijne says.

THE EMPTY CORNER CHAIR

Manu Bhaker will arrive in AichiNagoya having to subdue an ache in her heart, even as she seeks the poise and stillness essential to delivering shooting medals. Two years ago in Paris, as she won two Olympic medals and almost a third, her coach Jaspal Rana was a constant, reliable ally. They laughed, bickered, plotted and succeeded together.

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A couple of months back, Rana, not 50 yet, suddenly passed away. Bhaker is still only 24, and will return to the arc-lights of an intense competition knowing that his familiar, reassuring figure will not be in the corner chair. Her whole being will be reminded of the loss, even as she takes aim to deliver the one tribute her mentor would cherish.

In Aichi-Nagoya, Bhaker will be in the range for more than just medals. She will be seeking a balm for the gaping wound of Rana’s absence. In essence, each member of the 500- odd strong Indian contingent will have their own cross to bear at these Games. Beneath the ferocity and jostle of competition, those individual burdens will simmer, demanding to be confronted and overcome.