Here is the full transcript of Neha Aggarwal’s talk titled “Rising When You Fall” at TEDxHyderabad 2019 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The 2008 Beijing Olympics
It was the evening of 8th of August 2008. Billions of people across the world hooked on to the TV screens. 91,000 people gathered inside the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, China. Thousands of world’s top athletes from over 200 nations came together under one roof.
And there I was, clad in a beautiful green sari, ready to walk in the parade of nations. And as I saw the Tiranga in front of me, I felt chills down my spine. And suddenly at that moment, I realized this was it. This was the biggest sporting spectacle across the world, once every four years, and I had made it.
It was the Olympic Games. And as I stepped inside the Bird’s Nest Stadium, I pinched myself, not once, twice. It was hard to believe I was there. We walked across, waving to the crowd, and all I could see were flashes of lights.
And within that moment, those 12 years of hard work all came flashing across my mind. Practicing every day at 5:30 a.m. in the morning, the hard work, the toil, the sweat, and many times the blood, it all came flashing inside my mind. And that is when it felt all worth it. And that was it, when I had made it, with the top athletes in the world, the only woman to represent India at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in table tennis.
Early Days in Table Tennis
I was there. But when I started playing table tennis back in 1997, I was a little plump, very little kid from Delhi, who also liked cartoons and loved going to school. I had a very unique love-hate relationship with the sport. I had no idea why I started playing.
I had no idea why I was practicing. And I had no idea why I was working so hard. Or what I could recall, I only practiced. I loved going to the sessions because I used to hang out with my brother all the time.
And I had a very unique technique, so unique that when in 2001, I won the first national championship, the top Indian coach at that time told me, “You won the juniors, but you’ll never make it big in the senior category.” Now, let me explain to you what this unique technique was. The black side of the rubber, think of it as a nicely newly painted wall. If you throw a ball at it, it’ll respond, throw the ball back to you in a similar fashion.
But mine, the red side that you see is the long pimples. Now think, that newly painted wall now has a lot of bumps into it. It is rough, it is uneven. Throw a ball back at it and you don’t know how the ball will come back.
Innovating with a Unique Technique
These long pimples of mine would produce an opposite effect of whatever you throw at it and send the ball wobbling back to the opponent. So much so to produce a surprise element. And the technique was so unique that very few players across the world would use it. That’s for me and my coach.
There was no norm. There wasn’t a set way to play this. There weren’t any YouTube videos to watch. There weren’t any role models to emulate.
And thus, we had to innovate. We had to learn our own technique. We had to craft our own journey. And me and my coach set on this journey, which was so unique, which was so unknown and unheard of.
Never ever. But we held that belief and we knew we would do it. In the next seven years, I went on winning more national championship titles and three times a runner up. In no time, I became the top junior table tennis player in the country.
Rising to the Top
I also represented Asia at the World Cadet Challenge and won a gold medal in doubles partnering a Korean. But while we were set on this journey, life was so not normal. There were no time to invest in friendship. At school, my classmates even forget that I existed.
Even on tour. At that time, it was dominated by players from states like Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. And here there was this girl with this unique technique, curly hair, ready to rock on, who just became the topmost junior player in the country from Delhi. It was leading a very lonely, secluded life.
But I was there because of the backing of an excellent support system of my parents, my coach and my family. I have two elder brothers, but I, I was the favoured kid and the favoured kid who had no clue what I was doing back in 1997 soon set her eyes on the Olympics. In 2008, when I finally made it, that’s when I realised how far away we were from winning an Olympic medal.
I lost the first round there at the Olympics to a Chinese from Australia. And that’s when I realised the magnitude of my achievement. For a girl at that time to make it to the Olympics was itself a dream come true. But I wanted to win an Olympic medal for India.
Facing Setbacks and Making a Comeback
But the harsh reality was losing in the first round that I was very, very far away from it. But I set my eyes on it and I said I wanted to break the glass ceiling. And I wanted to do to be the one who’s never done that. I wanted to do the unknown the unthinkable moving ahead. Well, life is unexpected things don’t go how you think it would go.
Then what happened is something which shook me in January 20 2009. Back of playing the Olympics and winning the gold at the Commonwealth Youth Games at the National Championship, I lost in the pre-quarter finals.
And sport is very cruel, you know, when you lose, you don’t lose in isolation, you lose in a packed stadium. And when you’re the topmost player in the country, people love it when you lose.
Who doesn’t like an underdog story? Even the press writes you off. And for the one who loses, it’s humiliating. Every single competitor of yours out there is loving your loss.
Soon I was thrown out of the Indian team. I fell outside of the top 16 in the country. I cried. I cried so hard and I cried more.
I cried so much that I couldn’t cry anymore. And then I thought it was time to make a change. I decided to change the very technique that got me here. I decided to give up on the very technique that I became a master of.
And I decided to move on to that soft plain rubber, the nicely painted wall. Little did I know that I set on a Herculean task for myself. I was trying to unlearn what had become my natural instinct in the last 13 years. And I was trying to do something which was against my natural instinct.
Working Hard to Reach the Top Again
I was trying to do something which everybody told me not to. I was risking my prime age. I was risking my entire career. But I was committed.
And that’s when I thought to myself that this is the time I need to make a comeback. And I set on a journey. I worked hard like never before. I practiced four sessions every day.
I did everything possible that I knew and I could do to make a comeback. I worked with a psychologist. I worked on video analysis. That plump little kid was not plump anymore.
I was my fittest self. But then destiny had some other choices. They had some other plans for myself. I rose up to the number five player in the country, but that was not it.
I could not cross the quarterfinal mark. And that is when in October 2012, I wanted to finally give up. I wanted to stop being Neha Agarwal the athlete. I wanted to give up.
Persevering Through the Struggles
The only thing I ever knew was playing table tennis and doing it the best. I wanted to finally give up. I had not no idea what would I do if I don’t play table tennis. But I knew that this is what I don’t want to do.
The national championships were coming up after four months. And my then mentor, I told him that I’m done. He told me just hang in there for four more months. Trust me, it will work on if it doesn’t do what you want.
And again, I set on a journey and embracing the path which I had no idea what would bring. Two months into that, I actually one day in training, I thought to myself, what if I can marry both the techniques, the one which I had, I was a master of and the one which I had practiced rigorously in the last three years and make a deadly combination of both and then attack and defend from both rubbers. What if I could do that? What if I could achieve it?
And I think times change. In January 2013, I was not selected to be part of the PSTB team, which comprises of the top five players in the country and decided to play for my state. And I’m so proud to say that it was the first time in the history of Indian table tennis that Team Delhi, which I had captained, won the national championship for the first time ever. I was unbeaten throughout the tournament.
Representing India Again
I won two bronze medals for India at Commonwealth Championship. And then in August 2014, I was selected to represent India at the Asian Games. And, you know, in the last five years, I felt naked, naked because of the pride that I’d always worn was taken off because I was not in the Indian team. And when I got my kit for the Asian Games, the first thing I did, I took on the jacket, I wore it, my ceremonial Asian Games jacket.
I put it on and clicked the picture in front of my trophy cabinet. It felt as if I had my pride back. It felt as if I had made a comeback. But I never lost sight of the fact that how far I was away from winning an Olympic medal.
I eventually decided to retire and went to study at Columbia University in New York with a master’s in sports management and learned the nuances of what was happening because I understood that what we were trying to do is something that we were not competing and playing and training against the best in the world at par with them. I refuse to believe that we do not have talented athletes. I refuse to believe that we do not have athletes who don’t have the grit and the determination. I refuse to believe we weren’t athletic strong.
What was the reason? In the last five Olympic Games, India has won 13 medals. Think of a country of Kazakhstan, which we will never ever compare in terms of our economy, has won double the medals that we have won ever. What was going wrong?
It was the planning, it was the way we were nurturing the athletes. There were some problems that we were making while we set the journey. Why did it take for me four years to make a comeback? And I was determined to make sure the mistakes that we made at our time will not be made with the next generation of athletes.
And it was a no-brainer at that time to join the mission of two of India’s sporting legends, Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone, in their mission to help the Indian athletes win Olympic gold medals. OGQ is very proud to say that in the last two Olympic Games, India has won a total of eight medals. And five out of those eight medal winners, their entire training and preparation has been looked after by OGQ. TV Sindhu, Saina Nehwal, MC Maricom, Gagan Narang and Vijay Kumar.
Helping Indian Athletes Succeed
And that is what we want to do. At OGQ, we want to ensure our athletes have access to the best coaches in the country or abroad. So be it foreign or Indian coaches, we want to ensure that they play at the right tournaments, in the right training areas, be it India and abroad. We want to make sure that we get the best equipment that they need to play with.
We have a world-class team of sports science experts. We have a world-class team of doctors, trainers, physiotherapists, psychologists who are working 24-7 with our athletes on ground. And together, adding on to sports legends like Viren Raskina and Vishwanathan Anand, we all want to ensure that the mistakes that we made at our time are not repeated and are not made ever again. Because it’s that 1% which actually makes or defines if you’re a participant or a medal winner at the Olympic Games.
We want to ensure that we get 1% better in training, we get 1% better in competition, we get 1% better in our strength, get 1% better mentally, and there we will be there at par with the best athletes in the world. That plump little seven-year-old girl who used to wake up at 5:30 a.m. in the morning, I still do that. I still embrace the unknown, crafting my own journey and never losing the sight of the bigger picture.
I still wake up every day to help our athletes win those elusive gold medals because it takes just six grams of gold to lift the worth of the nation. Six grams is the weight of pure gold in an Olympic gold medal. And me and my entire team are determined to bring those gold medals for India. Thank you.