For a long time, India's Olympics moment meant re-living the long past glorious days of hockey, when the national team used to win glory at the Olympics on a regular basis till the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Then in 1996, young Leander Peas did the unexpected and won Bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the history of glorious hockey was pushed to a distance. In 2000 Karnam Malleswary brought in another bronze in weight lifting, becoming the first - and as of yet, the only - woman from India to win an individual medal at the Olympics. In 2004, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won silver at Athens, and the nation found a new moment of pride. In 2008at Beijing, Abhinav Bindra aimed and hit gold in shooting, while Sushil Kumar and Vijender Singh won bronze for boxing and wrestling respectively. And in all probability, London 2012 could create new moments to push the present to the distant past.

As for Kerala, the sports scene is still reminiscing on the 'miss by one hundredth of a second' that cost P T Usha, a bronze - in what would have been the first ever instance of an individual medal winner from India - at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. And after that it has been all empty and hence the picture of P T Usha still forms the highlight of the state's sporting history, And seemingly it is fated to continue in that manner for some time more to come, unless the unexpected happens, for which expectations are genuinely nil...