Having seen his mother toil hard to raise him, India's men's hockey captain Manpreet Singh understood the meaning of challenges quite early in life and as he gears up for his third successive Olympic appearance, he is driven by the desire to make her sacrifices count more than ever.

An Olympic veteran at 29, Manpreet, along with champion boxer M C Mary Kom, will be India's flag-bearer in the opening ceremony and faces the herculean task of leading the country to its first hockey medal in the Olympics in over four decades, starting July 23 in Tokyo.

"My mother is the biggest inspiration of my life. If she was not there I would be nothing. She is the motivation behind what I am today. I owe everything that I have earned in my career to her," Manpreet told PTI in an interview talking about his inspiration. Manpreet's mother, ManjeetKaur, had to take up odd jobs to support the family after his father was bogged down by mental health issues and had to give up his career.

His father died in 2016 while Manpreet was competing in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. "My mother has seen a lot of hardships. She raised me single-handedly from childhood after my father developed mental problems," he said. He is already living a dream after his nomination as a flagbearer, becoming the first hockey player since his idol Pargat Singh (1996) to be given the honor.

"It's a big privilege for me to have been given that honor. I am the sixth hockey player who has got this opportunity. Pargat Singh was the first hockey player from my village (Mithapur in Punjab) to get this opportunity in 1996. I consider myself lucky to have got this opportunity," he said. The ace midfielder knows that it won't be easy to clinch the country's ninth Olympic gold and first since the 1980 Moscow Games. But he believes a concerted team effort can achieve even the impossible. "Our target is to finish on the podium and my target can't be different from the team because hockey is a team game. I can't achieve anything alone," Manpreet said.

"But to achieve that we have to keep our focus intact. We need to give importance to every team, can't underestimate any team." Barring the World Cup and an Olympics medal, Manpreet has almost every medal that is there to be won in his cupboard.