Randhir Singh Gentle: Remembering a champ

Yesterday was the 25th death anniversary of triple-Olympic gold medalist Randhir Singh Gentle. DNA recalls his stupendous exploits.

MUMBAI: The biggest tragedy of Indian hockey is not that we fail to beat most of the top international teams these days. The sadder part of the story is that we fail to pay due respect to our hockey legends.

Not many, for example, know that on Monday, it was 25 years since hockey legend Randhir Singh Gentle, one of the few to hold the distinction of being a triple-Olympic gold medalist, passed away after suffering from a stroke at the age of 58. A rich heritage, that Indian hocket possesess, continues to be ignored. 

Gentle played for India in three Olympics, in 1948 in London, in 1952 in Helsinki, and in 1956 in Melbourne. India won on all the three occasions, but Gentle experienced his hour of glory in the Melbourne Games, where he captained India in the absence of Balbir Singh and scored six goals, including the decisive one against Pakistan in the final off a short corner. In his autobiography, Balbir describes Gentle as “one who towered above the rest with his hard and yet clean tackling”.

Gentle represented India in many international tours to East Africa, New Zealand and Australia, Japan and Hong and Europe. After retiring, he proved to be an outstanding coach and prepared national teams in India, Malaysia and Spain. He also became an international umpire.

Besides Gentle, the only other triple gold medalists India has produced are Dhyan Chand and goalkeeper Richard James Allen, who achieved the feat from 1928-1936 and Balbir Singh and Raganathan Francis, who won the honours from 1948-1956.

Gentle was passionate about the sport and led the Tata team to many title triumphs across India. According to noted sport columnist AFS Talyarkhan, Gentle was the most ‘outstanding, feared and sound full back in the world’ in his times.

A pity that we seem to have consigned this champ to the record books.