NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 5 Nine Gold Medals (poem) — Critical Reflection

Answer: B. stopped running.

Two pieces of evidence, both inside the extract:

• The idiom itself. ‘To pull up’ in a race means to slow and come to a halt; ‘on their heels’ adds the suddenness — the runners rock back onto their heels as they check their forward momentum.
• The next line settles it. “One by one they all turned round and went back to help him.” You cannot turn round and run backwards down a track unless you have first stopped. The poet gives you the proof in the very next line.

Compassion — they not only felt for the boy who fell, they acted on that feeling: “One by one they all turned round and went back to help him / And brought the young boy to his feet.”

Other single-word answers that the extract supports equally well:

• Selflessness — the poet names the cost in the very next line, “The ones who had trained for so long to compete.” They gave up months of preparation for one boy.
• Empathy — they understood at once what the fall meant to him, because each of them had trained for the same race.
• Sportsmanship — they treated a rival as a fellow athlete rather than as one competitor fewer.

The tone is admiring and warm — quietly amazed at what he is describing, though he never uses a word of praise directly.

How the admiration is produced:

• By a placed reminder. The second line, “The ones who had trained for so long to compete”, is not needed for the story at all. The poet puts it there so that the reader weighs the cost, and the effect is praise without an adjective.
• By the phrase ‘one by one’. Slowing the action down to eight separate acts invites the reader to marvel at each one.
• By the gentleness of the last line. “And brought the young boy to his feet” is plain, kind language — brought, not ‘dragged’ or ‘hauled’; ‘the young boy’, not ‘the fallen runner’.

He would have felt a rush of very mixed feelings — first surprise, then relief and gratitude, and finally a sense of belonging that was worth more to him than the race.

• Surprise, because nothing prepares an athlete for eight competitors giving up a final to come back for him. The poet flags the unexpectedness himself: “The same goes for what next occurred.”
• Relief — a moment earlier his “dreams and his efforts” had been “dashed in the dirt”, and now the race was not over for him after all.
• Gratitude, made concrete by touch: “brought the young boy to his feet”, and then “holding hands still” all the way to the line.
• Relief from humiliation. Falling in front of a full field is publicly embarrassing. Being lifted by the very people he had been beaten by turned the fall from a shame into a shared moment.
• Belonging. This is the deepest of the five. He was not carried off the track as a casualty; he was walked to the finish as one of nine. The last stanza gives him one of the “nine beaming faces”.

Yes — this is the turning point of the whole poem. Everything before stanza 6 follows the ordinary logic of a race; from stanza 6 onwards the poem obeys a different logic altogether.

1. The poet announces it before it happens. Stanza 5 ends: “But as sure as I’m standing here telling this story / The same goes for what next occurred.” He interrupts his own commentary to warn the reader that the expected story is about to break.

2. It reverses the direction of the poem — literally. Up to here every verb has driven forward: come, run, train, gather, line up, charge ahead. In stanza 6 the verbs reverse: pulled up, turned round, went back. The runners run against the race, and the poem changes with them.

3. It changes what the poem is about. Stanzas 1–5 are about competition — gold, silver and bronze, months of training, one winner. From stanza 6 the subject becomes solidarity, and the prize is redefined: a hundred-yard dash “now reduced to a walk”, and nine gold medals instead of one.

4. Without it, there is no poem. A small athlete falling in a race is not worth writing about; it happens at every school meet. The poem exists because of what the other eight did next.

They felt joyful, proud and united — the poet gives the evidence in two words: “nine beaming faces”.

Beaming is a strong word. It is not ‘smiling’ or ‘pleased’; a beaming face shines. And there are nine of them — including the boy who fell and the eight who had lost their chance at gold. Nobody in that line is disappointed.

• Joy, because all nine finished, and none had to be left behind.
• Pride — not the pride of beating others, but of having done the right thing together. The banner overhead confirmed it: “Could not have been more on the mark.”
• Togetherness, shown physically rather than stated: “holding hands still”. The word still means they had not let go even at the line, when there was no longer any need to hold on.
• Fulfilment — the months of training in stanza 1 came to something after all, though not to the thing any of them had expected.

Because at that finish line the thing being honoured was no longer speed. All nine had done what the Games exist to encourage, so all nine had won by the standard that actually applied.

• They finished together, so there was no first place to award. “They came to the finish line holding hands still” — nobody broke the tape ahead of anyone else. A shared finish demands a shared result.
• The competition had been replaced by something the organisers valued more. The poet says so: “a banner above that said (Special Olympics) / Could not have been more on the mark.” The chapter’s infographic on page 168 explains what the banner stands for — the Special Olympics “strives to create a better world by fostering the acceptance and inclusion of all people.” The nine had just demonstrated exactly that, on the track, in front of the crowd.
• The eight had already paid the price of a gold medal. “The ones who had trained for so long to compete” gave up the race deliberately. Their medal recognises a harder achievement than winning it would have been.
• The boy who fell had not withdrawn. He got up and completed the distance. In a movement whose athletes’ oath is “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt”, that is a gold-medal performance.

… a feeling of unity and togetherness — of solidarity among equals.

Any of these completions is acceptable, since each names the same idea: unity, togetherness, solidarity, friendship and equality, belonging.

Answer: A. amazed.

A standing ovation is prolonged applause during which an audience rises to its feet. People do not stand up for a race that ends normally; they stand when they have seen something extraordinary. Everything the crowd has just watched is extraordinary — eight finalists abandoning a race and walking a fallen competitor to the line. Their reaction is astonishment expressed as applause.

The last line is “Said more than these words ever will.” The poet is saying that the sight of the standing crowd and the nine shining faces communicated the meaning of that race more completely than any poem — including his own — could ever manage.

Three things the line does at once:

• It names the real ‘speakers’. The grammatical subject of ‘Said’ is not a person but “a standing ovation and nine beaming faces”. Applause and smiles are treated as a language, and a better one than English.
• It is an admission of the poet’s own limits. “These words” are the words you have just read. After eight stanzas of confident storytelling — “as sure as I’m standing here telling this story” — he steps back and says his medium was not equal to the moment. That humility is unusual and disarming.
• It hands the poem to the reader. By refusing to state the moral, the poet makes you supply it. You have to decide for yourself what those faces said, and a conclusion you reach yourself is one you keep.

The first two stanzas do a great deal of quiet work: they build an ordinary, crowded, keyed-up sports ground, and it is precisely that ordinariness which makes what happens later so startling.

1. They establish scale and effort. “The athletes had come from all over the country / To run for the gold, for the silver, and bronze / Many weeks and months of training / All coming down to these games.” Three medals are named, so this is real competition; ‘weeks and months’ tells us what has been invested. When eight runners later give this up, the reader already knows the price.

2. They fill the place with people. “The spectators gathered around the old field / To cheer on all the young women and men.” The word gathered puts a ring of watchers around the track, so nothing that happens will be private — the fall will be public, and so will the rescue.

3. They date and place it modestly. “The old field” is not a stadium; the surface, we learn in stanza 4, is asphalt. This is a local meet on worn ground, which keeps the poem believable and human-sized.

4. They raise the temperature. “The final event of the day was approaching / Excitement was high to begin.” The word final means there is no second chance, and the crowd’s excitement is already at its peak before a shot has been fired.

He would have felt a collapse of everything at once — physical pain, sharp frustration, deep anguish, and public humiliation. The poem gives the first three in his own cry and the fourth in the setting.

• Physical shock. He fell “to the asphalt” — a hard, road-like surface. There would be grazes and a jolt before any thought arrived.
• Frustration. The poet names it: “He gave out a cry of frustration and anguish.” Frustration is the feeling of being stopped by something you cannot argue with — his own foot, half a second of bad luck.
• Anguish — extreme pain or suffering, as the chapter’s own matching exercise glosses it on page 159. This is not disappointment; it is grief, and it is loud enough to be heard by a whole crowd.
• Total loss of hope. “His dreams and his efforts dashed in the dirt.” Both words matter — the dreams (what he had imagined) and the efforts (the months of training from stanza 1) go in the same instant.
• Humiliation. Stanza 2 has already told us that spectators are “gathered around the old field”. He is not falling in a practice session; he is falling in the final, in front of everybody, and he is “the smallest among them”.

Because everything they had done for months had been pointing at these few seconds. The poem gives four reasons in its first three stanzas.

• The training had to be spent. “Many weeks and months of training / All coming down to these games.” Preparation that has nowhere to go is unbearable; the athletes want the test they have been preparing for.
• There were medals to be won. “To run for the gold, for the silver, and bronze.” They had travelled “from all over the country” for exactly this.
• It was the last event of the day. “The final event of the day was approaching / Excitement was high to begin.” The whole meet had narrowed to their race, and the crowd’s attention was entirely on them.
• They were physically and mentally ready. “These were nine resolved athletes… / Poised for the sound of the gun.” Resolved is determination; poised is a body already balanced on the edge of movement. Waiting in that state is the hardest part of any race.

The change of pace is the poem’s central symbol. When “The hundred-yard dash now reduced to a walk”, the event stops being a contest between nine individuals and becomes a shared journey. Speed is exchanged for solidarity.

• Competition gives way to companionship. A dash separates people — the whole purpose of running fast is to leave others behind. A walk lets nine people move at the pace of the slowest, which is only possible if winning has stopped mattering.
• The word ‘reduced’ is deliberately ironic. In athletic terms the race has been diminished — a sprint has become a stroll. In human terms it has been enlarged, and the poet makes sure you notice by placing the banner in the very next line: “Could not have been more on the mark.”
• It symbolises inclusion. Nobody can be excluded from a walk. The boy who fell cannot sprint any more, so the race changes shape to fit him — which is the exact definition of inclusion the chapter gives on page 168, “fostering the acceptance and inclusion of all people”.
• It symbolises a change in the meaning of victory. Because they walked, all nine arrived together, and because they arrived together, all nine received gold. The slower they went, the more they won.

It would be a completely different poem — shorter, more conventional, and far less memorable. Almost everything readers value in ‘Nine Gold Medals’ comes from the collective ending.

David Roth writes in the plainest possible English and keeps his own opinion out of it, and that restraint is exactly what pulls the reader in. Four devices do most of the work.

• The language of a live commentary. Short declarative lines, past tense, one action per line: “The signal was given, the pistol exploded / And so did the runners all charging ahead.” The reader watches the race unfold at the runners’ speed rather than being told about it afterwards.
• Sound that imitates sense. The alliterative /st/ of “stumbled and staggered” lurches; the hard /d/ of “dashed in the dirt” thuds; the soft breath of “holding hands” quietens the ending. The reader feels the poem in the mouth before understanding it in the head.
• The direct address in stanza 5. “But as sure as I’m standing here telling this story” — the poet suddenly steps out from behind the commentary and speaks to you personally, staking his own credibility on what comes next. It is a storyteller’s move, and it makes the reader lean forward at exactly the right moment.
• A tone that changes with the events. Factual in stanzas 1–3, urgent and pained in 4–5, admiring in 6–8, and finally humble in the last line. Because the tone shifts, the reader’s feelings shift with it instead of settling into one attitude.

His purpose is to make readers rethink what winning means, and to do it by showing rather than preaching — using one small, true-sounding incident at a Special Olympics meet.

• To celebrate compassion in action. The eight runners had “trained for so long to compete” and gave it up in a moment. The poet wants that choice recorded and admired, which is why he slows it to “one by one”.
• To redefine victory. The title promises nine gold medals in a race that has one. By the end, the reader accepts the arithmetic — a sign that the definition has been successfully changed.
• To honour the ethos of the Special Olympics. “A banner above that said (Special Olympics) / Could not have been more on the mark.” The chapter’s infographic on page 168 states that aim directly — “to create a better world by fostering the acceptance and inclusion of all people.” The poem is that sentence turned into a story.
• To change how readers see athletes with intellectual disabilities. Nobody in this poem is pitied. Nine competitors train, travel, line up, fall, get up and finish. They are shown doing what athletes do, and doing one thing better than most athletes ever manage.
• To leave the reader with a working example rather than an instruction. The last line — “Said more than these words ever will” — is the poet admitting he would rather you carried the picture away than the sentence.