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When age fails to come in the way of sports rivalries
Will Rohan Bopanna break Rajeev Ram’s winning streak?
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(L) American Tennis player Rajeev Ram (R) Indian Tennis player Rohan Bopanna / X
Rivalries, traditional or otherwise, enliven sports competitions. Suppose the fight for Ashes between Australia and England enthuses cricket followers worldwide. In that case, the India-Pakistan game in hockey gets the South Asian community on the edge of their seats. Have you ever wondered about the tennis rivalry that has been growing between India and the United States since the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games?
Individual rivalries apart, they become so exciting and animated that they get linked to national pride and honour.
In the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, Indian ace Leander Paes made the medal round in men’s singles. In the semi-finals, he was drawn to meet the challenge of Andre Agassi of the hosts, USA. Though Leander lost to his much-fancied opponent, he made amends by winning the bronze medal, the first individual medal for an Indian athlete since the 1952 Helsinki Olympic games.
The defeat of Leander set in motion a rivalry that has since then been growing steadily. The USA has been triumphant in most of the prestigious events against its Indian opponents. Twenty years later, when the Indian mixed doubles pair of Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza faced Rajeev Ram and Venus Williams in the semi-finals in the Rio Olympic games, the Americans were unstoppable.
It was a golden opportunity for the Indian pair to end the 20-year drought in tennis, but it went down fighting to a Czech Republic pair in the bronze medal game.
The rivalry did not end with the second successive reverse for India in Olympic tennis, it got extended to one of the grand slams, the US Open. In the 2023 US Open, Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner lost the men’s doubles title to Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek.
Rohan Bopanna, one of the oldest players on the tennis circuit, may still be hopeful of ending his career with a medal in tennis. He may again run into Rajeev Ram in the men’s doubles event. This time, Rohan Bopanna will be paired with Sriram Balaji. The tennis competition will be held from July 27. Rohan, now 44, is the oldest while Rajeev is not far behind as he crossed 40 in March this year.
Rajeev Ram is one of the illustrious members of the Indian Diaspora who has won several honours for the US in Grand Slams and even a silver medal in the Olympic Games (2016). Rohan lost a chance to become the second Indian player after Leander to win an Olympic medal in Tennis in Rio. Paris may be his last chance.
Other than Rajeev Ram, Kanak Jha is another player of Indian origin who will be donning US colours for the third consecutive Olympic Games. Kanak plays Table Tennis but has never progressed to the medal round in his previous Olympic participations.
When the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee announced its 592-member 2024 Olympic team to compete at the 2024 edition of the Games, it included both Rajeev Ram and Kanak Jha. Before Rajeev Ram won a silver medal in 2016, cyclist Alexi Singh Grewal held aloft the US flag with a gold medal triumph in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Alexi Singh has been the torch-bearer of sportspersons of Indian origin representing the US in various major international sporting events.
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