One Giant Leap

India's Olympic sports history was exquisitely summed up by a scene at last summer's World Track and Field Championships in Paris. After Anju Bobby George was awarded the bronze medal in the long jump, she went below the stands and approached a meet official, who gave her a puzzled look. "I am here for the press conference," George said, reaching around her neck to grab the evidence. "Here, I have a medal."

When you come from a country of one billion people that has won only 15 Olympic medals—none in track and field—you sometimes have to explain that you really are a world-class long jumper. George's bumpy journey to that pinnacle began in third grade, when she won a cup and saucer for jumping more than three meters at school in Cheeranchira, a remote village abutting the Arabian Sea near India's southernmost tip. When he had the time, Anju's dad, K.T. Markose, the rare Indian father who encouraged his daughter to become an athlete, would wake her at 5 a.m. and ferry her six miles by bike to the nearest playground so she could run. She improved more after leaving home at age 13 and attending a boarding school 30 miles away that had a dirt track.

In 2000 George trained for her country's Olympic trials by jumping from a dirt runway into a mud pit; a synthetic running surface and dry sand were not available in the facility in the southern state of Nagercoil. George landed awkwardly on a clump of mud on one attempt and injured her right ankle. Still ailing days later, she jumped poorly at the trials and failed to make the team for Sydney.

It was a struggle to continue competing. George's $10,000 salary from her job as a customs officer was ample by Indian standards but meager for an athlete who wants to pay for overseas training and travel. Her attempts to secure financial backing were largely futile; she found that most shoe and soft-drink sponsorships in India were already promised to cricket and field hockey players. "When an athlete reaches a certain level in the States, you have one person for your technique, one for your diet, one to arrange your transportation," says George, 27. "In India we do not have a person to hold the phone for you."

George bounced back in 2002 to win bronze in the Commonwealth Games and gold in the Asian Games. Late that year, through intermediaries, she and her husband-coach, Bobby, began making arrangements to work with Mike Powell, the world-record holder who was coaching at Cal State-Fullerton. In March 2003 the Georges arrived in California for four months of training. "Mike made some technical changes," she says, "but mostly he made me believe I could jump far. He told me not to hold back."

At the worlds last summer George nailed a stunning fifth-round jump of 21'11�" to win India's first track and field medal at a major international meet. She returned home to a $50,000 stipend from the government and an audience with president Abdul Kalam, who told her, "Now we must change the color of the medal."

Though stiffer competition may prevent George from reaching the podium in Athens, she knows a medal would help lead to improvements in her country's dismal athletic facilities—one of her missions. "The government and the sponsors will care," she says. "I have not left my mark. I can climb more mountains, you know."