Marching behind the tricolour was a great feeling: Adille Sumariwalla

My greatest Olympic moment came when I walked into the stadium with 1,00,000 cheering. I have never seen it before. As you are marching behind the Indian flag, the feeling cannot be expressed in words. It was tremendous. My hair still stands out at the thought of those moments.

The Games was an eye-opener for us Indian athletes. Those days, we did not have synthetic tracks in India. We saw a completely different side to athletics as compared with India. My race did not go great. All along, I had been training on grass in India. When you are to compete on the synthetic track, the bounce mattered. There, it was more forward running on synthetic surface.

You had to change your style completely. That experience, understanding by looking at other athletes, their scientific training methods helped me in my later years as a coach.
That was the biggest takeaway for me from the Games. There was nothing right or wrong. It was a completely different understanding.

It was everybody’s dream to take part in the Olympics. I had my moment. In an inter-school athletics in 1974, I lost a race because I had not slept the previous night as I was partying. My coach was upset with me and said I threw away the race (because of late night) and that I should cut down on partying. I told I’d do everything that he told me to provided “Can I go to the Olympics?”

He was shocked by my query but said ‘Yes’. I did exactly as he said and in six years, I was at the Olympics. It was a dream fulfilled.

India was in a transition stage in athletics during that time. I did not have scientific training. If I had that, I’d have performed better. By the time PT Usha came to prominence, we had synthetic surface. The period from 1978 to 1980 was the ‘in-between’ era. But I had no regrets at all. I had a great time in sports and it made me a better human being. I was one of those guys who also did studies while being in sport.

—Adille Sumariwalla represented India at 1980 Games. Currently he is the president of the Athletics Federation of India.

He spoke to G Krishnan