Aruna’s Bronze at Gymnastics WC Shows the Might of Indian Women

For the past three and a half decades Indian women have been doing the nation proud, silently and unequivocally.

Sometimes nature (or say almighty or the invisible power) in its own way, delivers a verdict.

So when India’s gymnast Aruna Reddy won the country’s first-ever World Cup medal in Gymnastics in Melbourne, the message from that invisible force was once again clear that how superior our women are and how consistently they have been bringing glory to the nation over the years, which in fact is no way less than what their male counterparts have been achieving for the nation.

Aruna has achieved something which has been unthinkable until very recently as Gymnastics has not been our forte as a legacy. Before Aruna’s feat, in 2016, Aruna’s senior Dipa Karmakar missed a medal by a whisker in the same event (vault) at the Rio Olympics.

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For the past three and a half decades our women have been doing the nation proud, very silently and unequivocally, despite all the gender biases they have been subjected to in our society.

PT Usha missed out on a bronze medal in 1984 Los Angles Olympic by 1/100th of a second. After Milkha Singh’s epic at the 1960 Rome Olympic, no Indian male athlete could ever get as close in athletics at the Olympics.

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That is not all, the quartet of PT Usha, MD Valsamma, Vandana Rao and Shiny Abraham created history when they stormed into final of Women’s 4x400 relay at the 1984 Games. It was a huge moment and any other relay team (men/women) is yet to replicate such success in athletics at the Olympics.

Two years later at 1986 Seoul Asian Games, India won five gold medals and PT Usha clinched four out those five gold medals. In 2000 Sydney Olympics, the sole Indian medal was secured by our woman weightlifter Karnam Malleswari, which was the only third individual medal of India in the history of Olympics.

But what Indian female athletes mean for the country is so very well demonstrated by their show at Rio Olympic in 2016. India won two medals, one silver and one bronze and both were won by our women. PV Sindhu won silver in badminton and Sakshi Malik scripted a massive turnaround in the last few seconds to get bronze in wrestling. On the other hand, forget about medals, none of the male athletes could even leave a mark at Rio with their performance.

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Indian female shuttlers are way ahead of male shuttlers. PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal have Olympic and World Championship medals under their belt. Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa won a bronze in the doubles at World Badminton Championship in 2011.

Notwithstanding the great show by Srikant Kidambi and his other mates from the Gopichand Academy in the recent past, male shuttlers have no success stories to showcase at Olympic/World Championship level in the past decade.

Mary Kom has won five gold medals at the World Championships in Boxing and a bronze at the Olympics as well, which is unparalleled among male boxer barring the sole exception of Vijender Singh.

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The Phogat sisters have taken wrestling world by storm with their success stories during the past decade. If Indian male Cricketers are defeating South Africa in South Africa, our women are doing the same with equal ease.

Hats off to women like Aruna Reddy. It is because of them that the jury is out. The girls are specials and we need to respect them.

(The writer is an IIT graduate with a passion for sports, history and politics and can be reached at @pankajag1973. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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