Anju Bobby George went on to to set a national record for long jump at the 2004 Athens Olympics, but just missed out on a medal.
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India’s medal record in atheltics at the Summer Olympics is nothing to write home about. Despite sending full teams to the Olympics since 1920 onwards, India’s only medals in track and field disciplines came before that. What’s more, they were won by a British-Indian – Norman Pritchard. Pritchard was born in India but of British ethnicity, and is till date recognised as India’s first Olympian. What’s more, he is also the only person from India to win medals in track and field events. He won two silver medals at the 1900 Olympics. Few came close to matching him, with one of the notable ones being Anju Bobby George.
The Kerala-born athlete, who in 2021 was given a lifetime achievement award by the BBC for being India’s best athlete, was a medal favourite at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
But while she would go on to set a national record, an Olympic medal remained out of reach. That being said, it does not take away from what she achieved.
Here we look back at how the girl from Kottayam very nearly stepped on an Olympic podium in 2004.
Anju Bobby George was in fine form prior to the Olympics in 2004. In the Athletics World Championships held in Paris in 2003, she won a bronze medal in long jump. She thus became the first Indian athlete to win a medal at the event.
Before that, in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, she won another bronze. But what really had people hopeful was her superb showing in the Asian Games held later that year.
Generally speaking, the Asian Games are a lot tougher on athletes than the Commonwealth Games due to superior competition. There, George won a gold medal.
Thus, going into the Olympics, hopes were understandably high. India’s record in athletics was nothing to brag about and the emergence of a talented athlete like George naturally put pressure on her.
Then came August 25, 2004 – the day on which the long jump qualifiers were set to be held.
The format for the qualifiers in long jump is fairly simple. The 39 athletes who make it to the Games jump a maximum of three times.
Should they meet the qualifying distance – set at 6.65 meters for this event – before completing three jumps, they would not need to jump again.
The athletes who notch the 12 best distances would make it to the final round. If more than 12 athletes got the qualifying distance, they too would be included in the finals.
The qualifiers began relatively easily for George. In her first jump itself she reached 6.69 m – enough to see her through to the next round.
However, there were a few early concerns about her medal prospects already. For one, her jump was only the ninth fastest on the list. For the other, she was some distance off leader Tatyana Lebedeva, who jumped 6.95 m.
Of course, the thinking is that athletes often save themselves in qualifying, doing the bare minimum to get by. George got through on her first attempt and it was reasonable to expect her to better it.
The format also changes slightly in the final round. The 12 best athletes first jump thrice, with the top 8 classified athletes getting another three chances to jump. Thus, the best timing from those 6 jumps get counted.
George, like in the qualifying round, gave it her all in the first round itself. She jumped 6.83 m in the first go, which had her in third place overall.
However, she could not improve on that thereafter. Her next jump saw her notch up 6.75 m before she logged no official time for the third one.
She was, by that time, out of the medal standings but crucially was in the top 8. This meant she would get 3 more chances to better her timing.
Sadly, she would not be able to better her timing. The two jumps she landed which were counted saw her get 6.68 and 6.61 m, respectively.
The one which counted for her in the end – the 6.83 m first jump – was a national record for India. Unfortunately, it was only good enough for fifth place in the Games.
George’s stock did not drop too much after the 2004 Olympics. She would go on to win a gold medal in the World Athletics Final, becoming the first Indian to do so.
She also won silver in the 2006 Asian Games at Doha. Besides that, she won a gold medal at the 2005 Asian Championships and a silver at the same event two years later.
At one point, there was also some hope that George could retroactively be awarded a silver medal. This is because the three Russian athletes who won gold in 2004 – Tatyana Lebedeva, Irina Simagina and Tatyana Kotova – were all implicated in doping.
However, that never came to fruition. Still, it does little disservice to the valiant showing of George at the 2004 Olympics.
