The special people running the Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) with passion are delighted at Gagan Narang winning the bronze medal in the 10-metre air rifle event at the London Olympics on Monday.
“Happy and relieved” text messaged Viren Rasquinha to this reporter moments after Narang clinched the first medal for India.
Founded almost five years ago by legends like green baize maestro Geet Sethi and All England badminton single’s title winner Prakash Padukone, OGQ has been in the vanguard of encouraging and supporting sportspersons in pursuit of excellence at the Olympics.
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“We have worked with Gagan very hard after the Beijing Olympics and supported him in many ways, but the most important is the emotional support OGQ has rendered to Gagan,” said Rasquinha, former hockey Olympian and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) OGQ.
“Rakesh Khanna and me have been in touch with Gagan on a regular basis and I think there could not have been better mentors than Geet (Sethi) and Prakash (Padukone). They are not involved in the technical aspects of shooting. Emotional support and mentoring is under-estimated in India.
“Gagan was our first athlete and it was only after the Beijing Olympics that OGQ has been backing him in a big way, but as I said earlier, the most important has been on the count of emotional support and mentoring by Geet and Prakash,” explained Rasquinha.
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Apart from Sethi, Padukone, Khanna and Rasquinha, others involved in OGQ are Niraj Bajaj, Leander Paes, Viswanathan Anand, Kamlesh Mehta, Shitin Desai, R. Ramraj, Deepika Padukone and Neeraj Bharadwaj.