Leander Paes & Olympics: Barcelona '92 to London 2012 is a very long journey

Leander Paes' greatest sporting moment came at the 1996 Atlanta Games, where he won the singles bronze medal. For Indian sport the medal and the moment had a whole different meaning: It bridged a 44-year-old gap, the hollow bowels of which played on the minds of every Olympic athlete who hoped to return with an individual medal in the intervening years, says an article in The Times Of India, adding that Leander Paes, then ranked 126 in the world, sliced through the singles field at the 1996 Summer Games and scared Andre Agassi before clinching India's first individual Olympic medal after a gap of 44 years.

Khashaba Jadhav was independent India's first individual Olympic medalist, having won the freestyle wrestling bronze medal at the 1952 Helsinki Games. Ten Summer Games and 44 years later, the effort was still to be replicated. Since Paes won in Atlanta, the Indian contingent has returned with an individual medal from every edition of the quadrennial affair that followed.

In the Millennium Games in Sydney, weightlifter Karnam Malleswari won a bronze, which made her the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal. In Athens in 2004, Rajyavardhan Rathore claimed silver in the men's double trap. In Beijing in 2008, Abhinav Bindra powered to gold in the 10M air rifle event, becoming India's first individual gold medalist. There were two more individual medals in 2008, Vijender Singh (bronze in boxing) and Sushil Kumar (bronze in wrestling).

Meanwhile another report in TOI says that Barcelona '92 to London 2012 is a very long journey. That Leander Paes, aged 39, is still in the Olympic mix underlines longevity. “Competing in a record sixth Olympic Games, Paes will form India's No. 1 doubles combination (nominated by AITA) with the big-serving Hyderabadi Vishnu Vardhan and the mixed-doubles pairing with the big-hitting Sania Mirza. However, India's Davis Cup hero has won few friends in the lead-up to the Games,” says the report.

According to a report in Mid-Day, Leander Paes should stick to the deuce court and Sania Mirza should support him from the left side with her "solid ground strokes" when they compete in the mixed doubles event of the London Olympics, Indian Davis Cup captain S P Misra has suggested.

Sania's preferred court-side, like Paes, is the deuce (right side) and she is keen that she plays in Olympics from that side of the court. The two players are yet to decide on the choice of the court side and work out a strategy for the big event. Sania had played from the left side (advantage court) at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the duo had crashed out in the quarter-finals after losing to Scotland's Colin Fleming and Jocelyn Rae. But they were gold-medallists at the 2006 Doha Asian Games.

Misra, who is also the tennis team's leader at the Olympics, feels that Paes should continue to play from the right side.