India will full 75 years of Independence this yr. Here's a sequence acknowledging 75 nice sporting achievements by Indian athletes. Sportstar will current one iconic sporting achievement every day, main as much as August 15, 2022.
India’s final Olympic Hockey Gold on the 1980 Moscow Video games
After a tumultuous interval following the hockey debacle on the 1976 Montreal Olympics, India fielded a comparatively younger however gifted aspect for the Moscow Video games, the place barring skipper Vasudevan Baskaran and goalkeeper Bir Bahadur Chhetri, the remainder made their debut.
READ: In Photos: Indian hockey's 1980 Olympic gold journey
The Video games, although, had been marred by a U.S.-led boycott over the Russian presence in Afghanistan.
As such, males’s hockey had simply six groups with the medallists of the earlier Video games — New Zealand, Australia and Pakistan, moreover European powerhouses West Germany and Holland — remaining absent. Thus, a gold medal for India was a foregone conclusion.
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It was not all clean crusing for the Indians who drew 2-2 with each Poland and Spain within the league section whereas trouncing a weak Tanzania 18-0, Cuba 13-0 and Russia 4-2 to qualify for the ultimate.
India needed to work laborious for the gold as Spain put up a preventing efficiency. Targets by Surinder Singh Sodhi (2), Mohd Shahid and M.Okay. Kaushik arrange a 4-3 win for India.
The members of the India's filed hockey workforce leap for pleasure after beating the Spanish workforce 4-3 to win the gold medal within the Moscow Olympics on July 26, 1980. The victory offered India's ninth Olympic hockey title however its first since 1964. - THE HINDU ARCHIVES
Regardless of India successful the gold after a lapse of 16 years, few hooked up a lot significance on condition that the highest groups stayed out of the competitors. But, the triumph helped to appease the nerves and restore a modicum of respectability to Indian hockey whose slide was at the very least quickly halted.
(Learn the complete article revealed in The Hindu on July 17, 2012)
