Follow us on INDIA 12 years before Milkha failed to do so, Rebello could have won Independent India’s first Olympic track-and-field gold July 22, 2021, 8:22 AM IST A journalist who has lived all over India and is now based in Bangalore Just seven months before the London Olympics of August 1948, 19-year-old Henry Rebello of India had touched a distance of 50 feet 2 inches, the best effort for that year by any triple-jumper in the world, according to indianathletics.in (Athletics Federation of India). Expert sports commentators like Harold Abrahams (whose achievement in winning the 1924 Paris Olympics 100-metres gold inspired the 1982 Oscar award-winning movie “Chariots of Fire”) and the triple-jumper Jack Metcalfe (bronze medallist at the 1936 Berlin Games) had opined that Rebello would be unbeatable in the triple-jump event at the 1948 London Olympics. Sadly that was not to be.