So, Kumar, in the course of 90 minutes, defeated American Doug Schwab (7:4 on technical points), Bulgarian Albert Batyrov 8:4, and then Kazakh Leonid Spiridonov 3:2. As Kumar said later, “It was very tiring. But then all of us were equally tired.”

As we are finding out this week in Beijing, boxers and wrestlers, these practitioners of combat sports, are very sentimental men, given to effusive gratitude to the people who believed in them early. Kumar credited his coach, Satpal, with his win. That is the way with wrestlers. The story is told of the eventual winner in 66 kg freestyle at Sydney 2000. B Daniel Igali, a Nigerian-born Canadian, had won in overtime to enter the final. In the minutes before the match, he napped and dreamt of Maureen Matheny, a school-teacher who had become a mother figure to him after he made his home in Canada. She had since then died of cancer, but he dreamt she had come to sit by his side and say, “I am proud of you.” Igali won. Get used to these stories. Start learning the rules of combat. The idiom and texture of Indian sport are changing.