The Olympics are upon us and it's that time again, when we enjoy the superhuman sporting acts of elite athletes from the comfort of our screens. And perhaps wonder, just how much physical strain their bodies have to bear to run, swim, jump, throw or hit better than everyone else.
The sheer defiance of physics when gymnast Simone Biles rotates her body in mid-air or when weightlifter Mirabai Chanu lifts four times her body weight or when pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis leaps over 20 feet in the air. What would it be like if we laypeople had to put in physical effort equivalent to that of an Olympian is our daily life? Facing a smash that comes in faster than bullet trains or jumping off the third floor without any support.
We tried to understand how Olympic sports would be like in everyday life:
Javelin throw
AKA the Neeraj Chopra sport we Indians are very familiar with by now. The javelin weighs 800 gm and is about 8 feet.
Imagine hurling three cricket bats (end-to-end) that weigh a little more than a Cola PET bottle (the 750ml sized ones...) so far that it would cross 90 floors of a skyscraper on its side (or two India Gates).
10m air rifle - Shooting
The sport that has won India two Olympic medals, including that precious first ever Olympic gold by Abhinav Bindra. The rifle used in the discipline weighs about 5.5kg and the bull's eye ring on the target is 0.5 mm.
Imagine you hold 6 laptops steady at shoulder height, and hit a target the size of the nib of a pen from a distance that's about the length of a full-sized school bus. Repeatedly. 60 times. While wearing a tight-fitted jacket and trousers that weigh about 1-2 kg themselves. Oh, and the laptops recoil back (a bit) with each shot.
Bonus: A 10m air pistol is about 1.49 kg and it has to be held aloft in one hand, straight and steady. Imagine carrying home your groceries from the market like that.
Dragflick - Hockey
Imagine a rock travelling at around the speed of a Vande Bharat Express train coming straight at you.... and instead of dodging it, you run towards it. Hoping it hits you. So you can stop it.
That's the job of the rushers as they try to stop the dragflicker trying to convert the penalty corner. And there are multiple PCs in a match, with the rules very fluid on what transgression demands a PC and what doesn't.
High Jump
Imagine the Great Khali standing his full 7 feet 1 inch tall (2.15m) in your path, and you take a short sprint and flop your entire body over him, without touching him. That's what high-jumpers do on the regular and then some. The world record stands at 2.45m and India's national record at 2.29m, so maybe it's the Great Khali with a mohawk.
Smash - Badminton
We must have all played badminton at some point, but very few would have seen the shuttle coming at you faster than a bullet train, airplane or even a Formula 1 car. Much faster. Because the fastest smash recorded in badminton, both in game and in monitored environments, belongs to one Indian - Satwiksairaj Rankireddy - and it's at an unimaginable speed.
The Indian doubles star has hit a smash 500 km/h during a match and raised that to a fast and furious 565 km/h while at the Yonex facility with the aim of breaking the world record. For comparison, the fastest cricket ball is 161.3 km/h, the fastest tennis serve is 263 km/h and the fastest F1 car speed is 397.36km/h. Satwik is way ahead of that.
Fun fact: Three Indians top the recent list of fastest smashes on BWF Tour, with singles players Lakshya Sen and HS Prannoy around the 419 and 420 km/h mark. Both will be making Olympic debuts at Paris 2024.
Hurdles
The average height of hurdles in the 100m - where Jyothi Yarraji will be competing - is 3.5 feet. Imagine running full tilt to catch a flight and having to leap over an airport trolley not once, but 10 times back-to-back.
Diving
There's no Indian representation in this sport but it's still a fascinating watch.
Imagine jumping off what is the third floor of a building (10 meters) to hit the water as a speed of about 56.3 km/h and doing it while holding perfect form or moving in precise choreography mid-air and sometimes even synchronising with another human.
Weightlifting
A sport where success depends on lifting four times your body weight, 6 times for a medal and countless times daily in training. It will put any gym deadlift video to shame.
Take Mirabai Chanu, the silver medallist in women's 49 kg weightlifting, for example. Mirabai's daily total works out to 12,000 kg, which is the weight of five Mercedes G Wagons, or a 17-foot six-wheeler truck.
(For context: Virat Kohli's bat weighs around 1.2kgs. For him to be able to lift as much weight as Mirabai in a day, he would have to face 10,000 deliveries; Kohli played a total of 3072 deliveries in 2023.)
Boxing (heavy weight)
Taking one punch in heavyweight boxing is the equivalent of getting hit by a 5 kg sledgehammer swung from over-the-head. It generates as much power as a hatchback (think i-20 or Altroz).