Surinder Sodhi, top scorer in 1980, recounts
his village days

The Olympics that I played was memorable for two reasons — the last time we won a medal in hockey and that too was gold and the fact that I became the highest scorer. I am talking about 1980 Games in Moscow. Twenty-eight years have passed but the memories are still fresh.

The gold medal didnt come our way that easily. We had to play some outstanding hockey to bring in the eighth gold medal in hockey. Not all the matches we won convincingly, but we were consistent and on course to win the gold.

The match against Poland in group league was the toughest of all as we had levelled score 16 seconds from the time. We were trailing 0-1 and everyone though that our campaign was over, but a perfect conversion from a short corner brought parity and the long whistle was blown to mark the end of the match and thus we lived for another day.

Both matches (one group league and the other is final) against Spain were interesting. In the league tie we were leading 2-0 but they fought back and made it 2-2 to snatch a point from us. In the final also it had lots of ups and downs.

We were leading 1-0, they equalized and then we again scored only to concede another within a space of few minutes. But ultimately we prevailed 4-3 to take away the top honour.

Since we were playing well, we stayed tension-free and that helped us enjoy the ambience. We used to go to the dance floors and used to dine out with participants from other countries. Inside the village we used to commute by small trains from one place to another.
—As told to Sanjib Guha