GOLDEN OLYMPIC MOMENTS

• The first group of Indian sportsmen to ever visit the United States was the Indian hockey team for the 1932 Olympics. India retained the Olympic Gold it had first won in the 1928 Amsterdam Games. The scores were:
• India 11 - Japan 1 (Dhyan Chand 4, Roop Singh 3, Gurmeet Singh 4)
• India 24 - USA 1 (Roop Singh 10, Dhyan Chand 8, Gurmeet Singh 4, Richard Carr 1, Eric Pinniger 1)
  
  
• The 1932 Olympic hockey matches spawned a couple of records that stand till this date. The biggest score in an international hockey match is the 24-1 victory of India over the USA, played on August 11, 1932. The record for the most number of goals scored in a single hockey match belongs to Roop Singh, who slammed in ten goals in the 24-1 rout of USA.
  
  
• So how did USA score that one goal? The backs had decided to let the Americans have a run, but when they looked behind, there was no goalkeeper. The Indian goalkeeper Richard Allen was signing autographs behind the goal post!
  
  

• Hockey Kings Arrive Today.
  They will be accompanied by their many wives.
  There are two lions in the team

  The Los Angeles sport writer, way back in 1932, was wrong about the wives (whether one or many), though he was right about the lions. There were indeed two - Roop Singh and Gurmeet Singh.
  
  

• Foreign critics praised the sorcery of the champions in lyrical and melodious terms. A report in a Los Angeles daily, filed by a woman correspondent, said: "All the colour, glamour and pageantry of Rudyard Kipling's India might well have found its incarnation in the personnel of the Indian team which is to represent the land of Mahatma Gandhi. So agile are the members of the team that they can run the full length of the hockey field, juggling a small wooden ball with the flat of a hockey stick."
  
  
• The finest tribute to the Indian hockey team was by the Los Angeles sports journalists who voted the team's showing in the Olympics as "the most outstanding exhibition of skill in any sport."
  
  
• 25 out of the 35 goals scored by India in the 1932 Olympics were by the two brothers - left-in Roop Singh (15) and centre-forward Dhyan Chand (10). The hockey brothers went on to represent India in the 1936 Olympics also, winning yet another gold medal for India.
  
  
• The captain of the Indian team, Lal Shah Bokhari, migrated to Pakistan after partition, and was his country's High Commissioner to Ceylon. He died in Ceylon in 1958.
  
  
• India's record in the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles was as follows :
• Played: 2
• Won: 2
• Goals For: 35
• Goals Against: 2
  
  
• The following were the members of the 1932 Indian Olympic Team :
• Lal Shah Bokhari (captain)
• Richard J. Allen (goalkeeper)
• Syed Mohammed Jafar
• Mohammed Aslam
• Frank Brewin
• Richard J. Carr
• Dhyan Chand
• Leslie C. Hammond
• Arthur C. Hind
• Masud Minhas
• Broome Eric Pinniger
• Gurmeet Singh Kullar
• Roop Singh
• Carlyle Carroll Tapsell
• William Sullivan

Photo Courtesy Wills Book of Excellence - Hockey