India's tryst with heart-breaking fourth-place finishes at the Olympics

With just four days for the closing ceremony of the Paris Games, India stares at the possibility of returning home with few medals

It is widely dubbed the most agonising position to finish at the Olympics. The thin line that separates medal winners perched on the podium from those cruelly robbed of a shot at immortal glory. The fourth-place finish is the classic case of so near, yet so far.

With just four days for the closing ceremony of the Paris Games, India stares at the possibility of returning home with fewer medals than the seven it won at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.

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The reason is the plethora of heart-breaking fourth-place finishes in Paris. Ace shuttler Lakshya Sen frittered away a glorious opportunity of becoming the first Indian male badminton player to clinch bronze on Monday, despite leading in the opening game. 

Shooter Arjun Babuta could not have chosen a more inappropriate time to shoot his lowest score at the 10m air rifle final. A combination of bad luck and the inability to keep an ice-cool temperament has India currently holding just three bronze medals in Paris.

Here’s a list of Indian athletes who finished fourth at the Paris Games:

Lakshya Sen (Badminton): Sen’s loss to Malaysia’s Lee Zii Jia in the bronze-match playoff means that for the first time in 12 years, India’s shuttlers would return home without a medal.

Manu Bhaker (Women’s 25m air rifle shooting): Bhaker, a twin medallist in this edition, missed a bronze in women’s 25m air rifle by the finest margin.

Arjun Babuta (Men’s 1om air rifle shooting): Croatia’s Miran Maricic edged Babuta out with a score of 209.8, leaving him just 1.4 points shy of a medal. 

Ankita Bhakat and Dhiraj Bommadevara (Mixed team archery):  Bhakat and Bommadevara made history in Paris by becoming the first-ever Indian pair to reach the medal stages in archery. They missed out on the podium by losing to eventual champions South Korea in the semi-finals and the US in the bronze medal match.  

Maheshwari Chauhan and Anant Jeet Singh Naruka (Skeet mixed team shooting): Chauhan and Naruka lost out on bronze in the skeet mixed team event by just one point. Facing the Chinese pair, Chauhan and Naruka scored a combined 43 of 50 shots, as compared to 44 by China.    

The close finishes

PT Usha (1984): PT Usha, now the Indian Olympic Association president, is remembered for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where she clocked 55.42s in women’s 400m hurdles, missing bronze by just one-hundredth of a second.

Milkha Singh (1960): ‘The Flying Sikh’ fell short of clinching bronze by a mere 0.1 seconds at Rome 1960 Olympics.

Abhinav Bindra (2016): Playing in his fifth and final Olympics at Rio de Janeiro, Bindra was deprived of a fairytale ending to his career after losing a shoot-off to finish fourth. 

Honourable mentions

Men’s football team (1956 Melbourne Olympics)

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi: Men’s doubles in tennis (2004 Athens Olympics)

Joydeep Karmakar: Men’s 50m rifle (2012 London Olympics)

Dipa Karmakar: Women’s vault and gymnastics (2016 Rio Olympics)

Aditi Ashok: Women’s golf (2020 Tokyo Olympics)

Women’s hockey team (2020 Tokyo Olympics)

Deepak Punia: Men’s 86kg freestyle wrestling (2020 Tokyo Olympics)