Anju Bobby George

Like an angry, hungry stomach, dark clouds rumble over the Sports Authority of India campus on the outskirts of Bangalore. Long-jumper Anju Bobby George doesn’t even bother to look up at the threatening skies. Her body and soul are focussed on a small piece of green twig that her husband-coach Bobby George has just plucked from a nearby tree and planted on the far side of the sandpit.

It’s like a ritual. For the past five years, a twig — actually a marker placed at seven metres — is her treasured quest, her Holy Grail. If she jumps that far in Athens in August later this year, Anju could become the first ever Indian athlete to win an Olympic medal.

Now as she readies herself for a leap, other athletes — sprinters, hurdlers, long distance runners — stop in their tracks to watch her in action. Wearing a pair of grey shorts and a tight orange T-shirt, the five feet, 10 inches tall, pony-tailed athlete takes a deep breath.

Then she is all synchronicity. A good long jump is a secret alliance between speed and strength. And Anju shows how she soars like a bird on the wings of a prayer and lands in the sandpit. It’s a good jump but not good enough. The twig remains tantalisingly elusive.

In recent weeks, Anju and Bobby have chipped away like diligent woodpeckers at that seven-metre mark. Each improving centimetre has brought the 27-year-old Kerala athlete another step closer to an Olympic medal. “I know I can jump seven metres. It is a dream which is close to becoming a reality,” she says. That’s no idle boast; only the quiet conviction of an athlete who has done things no Indian has done before.

Anju — currently ranked no. 4 in the world — is the first to win a world athletics championship medal, the first to be signed by Hudson Smith International (HSI), a top sports management firm, the first to receive appearance fees at top global meets and the first who will endorse a multinational apparel and shoe company in a lucrative deal. “The deal will be finalised next month,” says Bobby. But, nothing would be cherished more by the sporting couple than an Olympic medal.

For, India’s Olympic saga is a terse short story: eight gold, one silver and two bronze in men’s hockey and a bronze apiece in wrestling, tennis and women’s weightlifting claimed over 17 Olympics since 1928. For athletes, the recurring theme is of heartbreaks. In 1984, P.T. Usha narrowly failed finishing third in the 400m hurdles.

Earlier, in 1960, Milkha Singh broke a world record but missed the 400m Olympic bronze. “Sometimes, I wake up in the night reliving those last seconds of the race,” Singh said sometime back. “It hurts even now.”

At the SAI’s multi-speciality gymnasium, allegedly one of the best in the country, it starts to become clear why the medal remains elusive. Worn-out medicine balls, chipped weight plates, rusty stands, patched-up pulleys and dust all around — it is the sort of place more suitable to produce an asthma attack or a tetanus patient than create a champion athlete. “Some of this stuff became outdated after World War II,” says Bobby, helping Anju with the weights. He is not joking.

Mercifully, the Athletics Federation of India has ensured that the duo will fly to Paris later this week. For the next couple of months, Anju will bake her pizzas and cook fish and pasta at home — an apartment provided by the Indian embassy — and practise at the Sebastian Charlety stadium close by. Bobby reels off the names and dates of every championship they will participate in, in the run-up to Athens. Like Anju, he too is living a dream.

Few believed that any Indian athlete could be an Olympic medal hopeful before Anju jumped 6.70m on a wet, chilly evening last year at St Denis, France, to claim the bronze medal in the world athletics championship.

Since then, a billion-plus nation has pinned its Olympic hopes on the unassuming girl from Kerala’s Cheeranchira village. The crushing weight of public expectation is a heavy cross to bear but Anju is not worried. “It’s my duty as a sportsperson to fulfil the dream of my country,” she says.

Anju has always been dedicated. As a teenager, she left home to stay with K.P. Thomas, the coach who groomed her, about 50 kilometres from her home.

And even after winning the bronze medal in France, she found no time to visit the Eiffel Tower. “And we have missed so many weddings and angered so many relatives,” jokes the garrulous Bobby.

It’s been worth it. Ranked no. 61 in 2001, Anju moved up to 16 the next year and, according to the latest world rankings released on May 17, is currently no. 4.

But for Jamaican Elva Goulbourne, who leapt an eye-popping 7.16m at a Mexico meet, nobody has come close to the 7m mark this outdoor season. Anju’s own season’s best is only 6.66m; her gold medal winning jump of 6.82m at Doha earlier this month won’t count because it was wind-assisted.

Bobby, a former national triple jump champion himself, points out that almost 90 per cent of her jumps this year were above 6.70m. “Last Thursday, she even did 6.90m during practice,” he says. “If she maintains this tempo, she can reach 7 to 7.10m,” adds G.R. Shyam Kumar, former national men’s long jump champion.

That could be good enough for an Olympic gold but performing in home conditions during practice and delivering under pressure on the world’s biggest sporting stage are two different things. Besides, a lot would also depend on the performance of fellow jumpers such as world no. 1 Tatyana Kotova of Russia, Frenchwoman Eunice Barber and Goulbourne — all contenders for a place on the podium.

Athens will be Anju's first stab at the Olympics. An ankle injury incurred at a mudtrack in Nagercoil in 1999 set her back by two years. “Missing the 2000 Olympics was a big disappointment,” she recalls.

The same year, after a four-year courtship by the tracks and the pit, she tied the knot with Bobby. He proposed — she doesn’t remember where — and she agreed. When Bobby, whose own promising career was cut short by an injury, decided to coach her, there were murmurs of disapproval. After all, he wasn’t a trained coach.

But Bobby gave her wings. He drilled ambition into her, the desire and daring to dream big. Watching them in action, it is obvious the two make a good couple and a great team.

A mechanical engineer, he has read and researched extensively on the bio-mechanics of the long jump. Anju, a first-class graduate in economics, acknowledges the role he has played. “Ours is teamwork, it’s like 50-50. We cannot do without each other,” says the long jumper whose overall best is 6.74m.

The two couldn’t have done without world record-holder Mike Powell either. Realising the importance of exposure in the West, they got in touch, after a great deal of difficulty, with Powell who runs a California-based academy. In 2003, she had a nine-week stint with him, which, she says, transformed her mental make-up.

The former long jump champion ironed out a few rough spots in her running action but, more importantly, gave her the confidence she badly needed to compete with the best. He made her realise the significance of relaxing before a race, and even advised her on using cosmetics. “In the West, looking good is a part of feeling good before a race,” Anju says. Now when she races abroad, Anju often touches up her face.

Powell also introduced them to the sports management firm, HSI. Once, HSI had signed Anju, the doors for the elite and lucrative world athletics circuit had opened. The dollar prize money, the $4,000 as appearance fees which she now commands plus a cool Rs 30 lakh from sponsors Sobha Developers have together helped the athlete couple live the good life. They now drive a shining steel-grey Chevrolet Optra.

Leap of Faith: Anju with her husband and coach, Bobby George

But Anju hasn’t forgotten the time her father, who ran a modest catering service, used to wake her up early in the morning and take her on a bicycle to a playground about 10 kilometres away for practice. “Like any other child, I used to cry,” she recalls.

From winning a lemon race at the age of four which she only vaguely recollects now, Anju won so many trophies in school and college that there wasn’t enough space in her home to exhibit them.

“But it was only after joining the senior nationals camp in 1996 that I thought it was time to get serious,” says Anju, who struck gold at the 2002 Busan Asian Games.

But it doesn’t get more serious than the Olympics. For a nation whose slim medal hopes are pinned on two tennis players who prefer not to play with each other, on shooters who are yet to fire their best shot on the biggest stage and on a hockey team where its most gifted player is often kept out, the long jumper is a genuine medal hope.

For India’s sake, Anju Bobby George has a promise to keep.