India National Thread

[Prashanth 184]

Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI)  functionaries are entangled in a legal battle to wrest control of the apex body running the sport in the country. This is looking like the boxing way...Why do these people spoil the sportspersons life because of their gains. Hope they sort out fast and don't affect the athletes.

[Prashanth 184]

Sania Mirza & Barbora Strycova win Cincinati Tennis with a 7-5 6-4 win over Hingis & Vandeweghe.

 

Great start for Sania after the break up of the partner....

[Madhusudhan 12]

My overall assessment/review of India performance at Rio Olympics:

 

Best Individual performance: Here it is very easy… It has to be Sindhu for her silver medal performance… She has defeated three top 10 players including world no.2 enroute to final

 

Most Disappointing Individual performance: Its very difficult to pick one out of many poor performances (shooting, male wrestlers, tennis…) my pick here is Mirabai chanu, because she simply has to lift her PB which would have ensured silver medal and even tad below lift would have given her bronze medal. India has lost a medal which is for begging and that seems to have set the tone for disappointing performance for India

 

Best Performance by Event: It has to be badminton and women’s wrestling(here we definitely lost a bronze if not Gold because of vinesha injury)

 

Most Disappointing Performance by Event: Shooting… I never expected zero medal from them… In worst case scenario one medal was expected based on law of large numbers (this theory has worked against us as we were winning medals in shooting consistently and one odd event inevitably turned out to be Olympics)  & Men’s Wrestling

 

Surprising performance: It has to be Sakshi malik……. She is the one athlete who won her matches from loosing positions where as all other Indians lost from winning positions.

 

Heartbreaks: Bindra loosing out medal in shootoff, Mixed doubles team unable to win medal after winning 1st set in semis, Womens Archery team loosing out in shootoff in QF, Vinesha/Saina Injury, Mirabai Chanu, India hockey loss in quarters after leading, Many shooters unable to qualify for finals after leading until final round

 

Special mentions:

Dipa Kamrakar (Gymnastics) and Aditi Ashok (Golf). They introduced 2 new Olympic events for India with a stellar performance. Followed by Srikanth(Badminton), Atanu Das(Archery), Lalitha Babar(Athletics), Dattu (Rowing) and Kethu Ram,Gopi(PB in Marathon)

 

Overall Verdict: Very Disappointing …. Sindhu and Sakshi medals in last few days saved India from Disaster

 

Conclusion:

Before Olympics started I gave thought about potential medal winners and then I realized as per the world rankings only Jitu rai and may be Shiva Thapa are expected to win medal. Few others are on border line. Considering the previous two Olympics performance I was also of the view that India would definitely win 5 medals. We were relying more on standout performances, luck, favorable draw which were definitely not the case this time.  

Finally after considering many things, because of underperformance from many athletes I would like to use Star sports caption for our Olympics performace as ‘Is se Bura aur kuch nahi’. Ultimately on a positive note I feel future is going to be good from here.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Madhusudhan

[Dolby 755]

Continuing my assessment, next is Athletics. 

 

We qualified record number of athletes. Also, a large number of National records were broken in the process. But, somehow I don't feel excited about them. In fact, improvements shown by some is suspicious. AFI re-appointing a doping tainted coach for the women's 4x400 relay team also increases my fears. 

 

In the Olympics, except Lalita Babar, Manish Rawat, T Gopi and Kheta Ram nobody came even close to their Personal Bests. I know, that a large number of them had already pushed themselves to the limit to qualify for Olympics and hence, were not in peak form, so it should have been expected, but still it was sad to see. I expected more from Vikas Gowda and Seema Antil. They are experienced and had qualified fairly early, so they should have done better but now it is clear that they are past their prime. As for Tintu Luka, we need to accept that she is not going to come even close to the level that we had hoped for. She will hover around 2 minute mark. Occasionally drop below 2 minute mark and win medals but thats it. I think, she should give 400m a try. Maybe it will be a better fit. Our relay teams promised much but failed to deliver. After the result in 800m, there will be increased attention on hyperandrogenism and hence on Dutee Chand. I hope we support her no matter what the IAAF/CAS decide. We should not fail her like we failed Santhi and Pinky. 

 

Since 2014, AFI has followed a policy of not sending 'tourists' to Asian Games and CWG. But, it was interesting to see AFI not selecting Tintu in the initial relay team (they even tried to not select Nirmala and Anas in the team but were not allowed due to IAAF rules) even though she was always going to run the relay. Only reason for doing so is that they wanted to inflate the number of athletes qualified. This is nothing but hypocrisy. If sending 'tourists' to AG and CWG harms our image then let us not send 'tourists' to Olympics as well. If artificially inflating number of athletes is kosher for Olympics, why stop deserving athletes from going to AG and CWG. 

 

Also, AFI should seriously think about hiring an intern who can read a 2-3 page qualification document. Not knowing that athletes qualified for 400m HAVE to be selected for relay team is simply unprofessional. Also, they should have known that there are no wild cards in athletics. Still they wasted time in trying for a wild card for Neeraj Chopra. They even sent the useless media on a wild goose chase regarding that. Fans and Neeraj were given a false hope. They even made a fool of themselves by starting a Change.org petition asking for wild card for Neeraj. 

 

The way AFI is run is an indicator that having ex-sportspersons as head of National federations is not the "Raam-baan ilaaj" people think it is. 

 

For the future, in Neeraj we have a genuinely good athlete. It would be interesting to see how he progresses. Other promising youngsters in the recent past (Durgesh Pal and Navjeet Dhillon) didn't transition to the seniors easily. They are still young and improving so there is still hope. For Tokyo, I would be happy with a large team qualifying early and couple of finals. 

 

P.S. The way people are calling Lalita's incredible performance, best by an Indian athlete since PT Usha saddens me a lot. It shows that we have already forgotten Anju Bobby George, Vikas Gowda and Krishna Poonia's performances. Also, I rate JJ Sobha and Soma Biswas's performance at 2004 Olympics quite high. 

[Dolby 755]

In Boxing, there is not much to write. Only 3 boxers qualifying for Olympics was a big step back from London. Thapa had a nightmare draw, eventual gold medal winner in Round 1. We are without a National Federation for quite some time now. First step on the path to recovery would be having a federation. We were on the right track till London, so have hopes that if we get our house in order, situation will improve.

 

But, even if we do all the right things, there is no certainty that results will come. AIBA is a mafia. India was never on their radar and hence, our boxers could be discriminated against easily. Sarita's outcry at Asian Games would not have helped. It would also be interesting to see if AIBA has the balls to take on powerful Irish federation or they will simply ignore the way Conlan lambasted them. And if they do take action against them, I am expecting a strong reaction from Irish team. Hopefully, something positive would come out from it. 

 

I think Sarita and Mary would both retire now. I feel for Sarita. She had to move 2 weight classes to accommodate Mary at 52kg and got a horrible draw in 2012. She was robbed in Incheon. After that, she was never going to qualify for Olympics. She was too emotionally drained. Also, AIBA would never have allowed her to win or even qualify for Olympics after that.

 

For Tokyo, I have no hopes from Boxing. There are too many uncertainties. 

[tirtha22 238]

Dipa Karmakar's coach said today in press conference that he has made a target to make ready 6 gymnasts from India ( 3 men + 3 women ) for Tokyo 2020 Olympics

[Prakash 50]

On 8/17/2016 at 14:37, Prakash said:

FIFA International Friendly

 

vs

 

3rd September 2016, Mumbai

 

Indian National Team will be facing off against Puerto Rico (Ranked 114) in an international friendly match on 3rd September to be held at the Mumbai Football Arena. In order to prepare for the encounter, Mumbai will also be hosting a preparatory camp for the squad from 28th August.

Good news...Match will be broadcasted in Star Sports.

[shrikant 3]

This Olympics from my point of view was very bad for India... From Doping taint to Minister Goof ups our nation prestige was in stake.... We got solace from Sindhu and Sakshi ( who were not even in our top 10 medal expected candidates)....In our work culture we are very good with Jugaad and we expect this jugaad to work even in our sports... Unfortunately Olympics was a clear learning that only hard work dedication and practice can fetch medals...Jugaad may help you to qualify and after that nothing... If we expect miracles in next 4 years then that will be wrong but one good thing is that lot of indians followed Olympics... lot of discussions in social media... But then again we indians will love to see our kids excelling in studies, dancing and singing... The number of shows happening in TV with respect to Dancing and singing even if 10% of such events take place to capture good sports person for various sports then we may see some increase in our tally....

[tirtha22 238]

Indian runners said that after every 2.5 kms, there were stations installed for every country officials to provide water for their athletes.All stations were manned with officials except that of India's ones.

[sameerph 5]

We as fans also have to be realistic about expectations. There were many on this board who went gaga over we getting our 120 athletes qualified for Olympics and saying that it is a sporting revolution in India and all. Where are all those hiding now ? Gone are the days when we were only satisfied with getting qualifiers. Medals are what it counts. And it was clear even at that stage how the number of 120 was achieved. That was thru getting a lots of qualifiers thru Athletics by  questionable means.

We as fans should see thru this. Realistically, I was expecting between 4-6 medals for us and we fell far behind that too.