Thrown into a field of dreams
If you’re over six feet tall and weigh over 100 kilograms, life can sometimes be easy because not too many people want to say no to you. But, if you’re a woman, the world will make things hard by treating you as an outlier. So Kamalpreet Kaur did the best thing she could – become an elite track and field athlete. The importance of Kamalpreet to Indian sport cannot be overstated on a day when she will step into a circle 2.5m in diameter, with a 1 kg disc in her hand, and look to hurl it beyond the margins of history.
No Indian track and field athlete, not even the pantheon of Milkha Singh, PT Usha and Anju Bobby George – each of whom won multiple international medals – managed to get on the podium at the Olympics. (Historians will point to Norman Pritchard’s two silvers at Paris 1900, but the debate over which country those medals should really be credited to lingers on.)
What has put a spring in Kamalpreet’s stride as she goes into the final at Tokyo 2020 is that her 64m throw in the qualifying round was the second farthest in field after American Valari Allman’s 66.42m. This, juxtaposed with how Kamalpreet became the only Indian woman to cross 65 metres in March, and then bettered her national record to 66.59m in June, suggests she’s getting stronger with every competition. The trend makes her a dark horse in Monday’s competition.
The story goes that Kamalpreet was first persuaded to hurl the discus by a physical training instructor, and that she went with the suggestion for her love of milk and butter. Athletes in his high-performance programme, she realised, were given better food than others, and their access to the good stuff wasn’t rationed.
A journey that started that day has hit several rough patches -there were financial constraints, injuries, even talk of an androgen test. There were moments when she wanted to give up, but Kamalpreet battled on.
And with good reason – for when does Olympic glory come easy? Al Oerter was born in Astoria, New York City, two weeks after Jesse Owens transformed American track and field at Berlin 1936 with four gold medals. Tall, athletic, with the physique of a typical American jock, Oerter was scouted by the Yankees before settling for what he thought would be a career as a sprinter.
One day, in the spring of 1952, Oerter was on his high school track when a disc landed in his path. He picked it up and hurled it back, beyond where the group of discus throwers were practising. His coach saw this, and Oerter’s life took a pivotal turn from track to field. Four years later, he was at the Olympic Games. Oerter is the first athlete in history to win the discus gold at four consecutive Olympics between Melbourne 1956 and Mexico 1968 – a record matched only by Carl Lewis in the long jump between 1984 and 1996, and Michael Phelps between 2004 and 2016. But, unlike Lewis and Phelps, what was truly remarkable about his feat was that, on each occasion, he broke the Olympic record, defeated the current world record holder, overcame injuries that could’ve ended his career, and wasn’t the favourite for gold.
In 1991, he said in an interview to The Olympian magazine that he was “really young” at Melbourne, “not very capable” at Rome, “very injured” at Tokyo, and “old” in Mexico City. Oerter was probably right on all four counts. He competed and won anyway.
Before the 1964 Tokyo Games, doctors treating him for a neck injury told Oerter it was time to retire. “These are The Olympics,” Oerter replied. “You die before you quit.”
The story of Al Oerter is not so much about brilliance as it is about grit and perseverance. That’s why anyone who picks up a discus is eventually told about the man who somehow always got the job done.
Sixty-five years after Oerter’s first appearance on an Olympic stage, in the same discipline, in a very different context, with different aspirations, but with the burden of history on her shoulders, Kamalpreet Kaur will get her chance.