"If you had asked this question like five years back, I would never believe that I will be a double medallist," says midfielder Hardik Singh when asked which of the two bronze medals he and the Indian men's hockey team won at consecutive Olympic Games was the tougher. It is a question made extraordinary by the history of Indian hockey at the Olympics. Not just the part where teams led by the likes of Dhyan Chand, Kishen Lal, KD Singh Babu and Balbir Singh Sr.
dominated the Games to the point that they made a mockery of the other teams, but also the stunning and painful fall that came after that. A dry spell of medals that lasted more than four decades until it was ended by the team that included Hardik at Tokyo 2020. At the next Games, the recently concluded Paris Olympics, India won another bronze.
Suddenly, the team had won back-to-back Olympic medals for the first time since 1972—the last Games in which hockey was played on grass and the one that arguably marked the definitive end of India's dominance. Bronze with a golden scar However, this medal comes with an asterisk for Hardik. "It's a huge achievement.
Still want to win the gold medal, that is the ultimate goal for me. We were just inches away from that. That is a scar that will be there for a long time.
We have the 2026 World Cup and we will focus on that. We want to win the gold there," the 25-year-old, who was among the architects of some of India's most important wins in Paris, told Hindustan Times on a rainy da.