Its six months to the day for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games to kick-off and till date about 61 Indians have attained the qualifying standards to compete in them. There will be a few more after pending qualifiers of some sports are concluded. The final qualification opportunity for Asian shooters concluded this week by the way right here in New Delhi, It was heartening to see some sports loving nations like Singapore and Malaysia win their first ever quotas in the sport for Rio right here in India's capital city. The toil and tears which go into such massive human efforts is often missed by the mass-media in general, overeager and rightly so, to project successes closer home. India added four more Rio quotas to their existing eight to ensure a record participation of the sport in all Olympics and if performances of the last four years are anything to go by, then shooting should once again return as the country's most successful sport from the games. However we should have done more in Shooting and the 3-4 'near miss quotas' could come back to hurt us really hard at the end of the games. Read on to find out why.
The problem this time is that the benchmark is Six medals! Are we confident enough to surpass the mark which every nation progressing in the right direction should aspire to do as a bare minimum? This space a while before the London Games had emphatically stressed on Six medals as a certainty.! This time there is nothing that makes us overtly optimistic....even of touching that mark, leave alone bypassing it. Why?
By and large over the last four years if you have followed this space, you would find that the Olympic sports that have performed at a top international level for India continue to be the ones which were already an area of strength in the last games. Archery, Badminton, Boxing,Shooting, Tennis and Wrestling. The worry is that over the past four years in Archery, Boxing and Wrestling we have kinda stagnated as far as top international results are concerned, instead of being on an upswing. Combined we probably have four quality athletes ranked in the lower top 10s of the world across the 35 odd competition categories which will give away medals at the Olympics.
Shiva Thapa is perhaps the highest ranked at number two in his boxing weight category and Deepika Kumari and Mary Kom are probably the other significant names on that list but they have either remained at same performance levels or have gone down with age. To expect three medals from the above three disciplines would be being too optimistic given that the world is too young and fast nowadays to wait for athletes past their prime to to make lasting mark. Unless of course if you are an Usain Bolt! That leaves you with Shooting, Tennis and Badminton. Shooting has the potential to be a game changer for this trio if lady luck goes India's way at Rio and these three disciplines alone can then help us surpass the London mark or at least touch it. At their best your shooters can give you four medals, Shuttlers two and Tennis one to easily go past London. And then anything else we get will be a bonus:))
Golf is the other sport where we would be sending a quality side and have been doing really well at the top level in recent times. However its a debut for the sport and all the top guns of the world will be giving it their all so it would be very harsh to expect a medal out of the sport. Anirban Lahiri and SSP Chawrasia should make it on present form and rankings.
GK's Call!
And I know its a shame and it continues to be for decades now but we should not be expecting any medals at all from the Men's and Women's hockey team who have also qualified for Rio.-GK's Call!
If I were to be negative and add my personal experience to it, I would have to say that it is really sad that our internal political equations come in the way of progress of Olympic sports in this country....and so it is in any walk of life here. Here is hoping and continuing to hope that we reach double figures at least at Tokyo 2020! At the very least if we have any dignity left as a nation!-GK's Agony!
The way to look at it is obviously being positive. What we do have in the forthcoming games is Quality Olympic experience of winning medals. Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal, Mary Kom, Yogeshwar Dutt and most probably Sushil Kumar give you that comforting company which previous Indian Olympic squads were deprived of. We need to cash in on this, hope that their presence energizes everyone to give off their best and that is our best chance to come back with our best ever performance from Rio!
The problem this time is that the benchmark is Six medals! Are we confident enough to surpass the mark which every nation progressing in the right direction should aspire to do as a bare minimum? This space a while before the London Games had emphatically stressed on Six medals as a certainty.! This time there is nothing that makes us overtly optimistic....even of touching that mark, leave alone bypassing it. Why?
By and large over the last four years if you have followed this space, you would find that the Olympic sports that have performed at a top international level for India continue to be the ones which were already an area of strength in the last games. Archery, Badminton, Boxing,Shooting, Tennis and Wrestling. The worry is that over the past four years in Archery, Boxing and Wrestling we have kinda stagnated as far as top international results are concerned, instead of being on an upswing. Combined we probably have four quality athletes ranked in the lower top 10s of the world across the 35 odd competition categories which will give away medals at the Olympics.
Shiva Thapa is perhaps the highest ranked at number two in his boxing weight category and Deepika Kumari and Mary Kom are probably the other significant names on that list but they have either remained at same performance levels or have gone down with age. To expect three medals from the above three disciplines would be being too optimistic given that the world is too young and fast nowadays to wait for athletes past their prime to to make lasting mark. Unless of course if you are an Usain Bolt! That leaves you with Shooting, Tennis and Badminton. Shooting has the potential to be a game changer for this trio if lady luck goes India's way at Rio and these three disciplines alone can then help us surpass the London mark or at least touch it. At their best your shooters can give you four medals, Shuttlers two and Tennis one to easily go past London. And then anything else we get will be a bonus:))
Golf is the other sport where we would be sending a quality side and have been doing really well at the top level in recent times. However its a debut for the sport and all the top guns of the world will be giving it their all so it would be very harsh to expect a medal out of the sport. Anirban Lahiri and SSP Chawrasia should make it on present form and rankings.
GK's Call!
And I know its a shame and it continues to be for decades now but we should not be expecting any medals at all from the Men's and Women's hockey team who have also qualified for Rio.-GK's Call!
If I were to be negative and add my personal experience to it, I would have to say that it is really sad that our internal political equations come in the way of progress of Olympic sports in this country....and so it is in any walk of life here. Here is hoping and continuing to hope that we reach double figures at least at Tokyo 2020! At the very least if we have any dignity left as a nation!-GK's Agony!
The way to look at it is obviously being positive. What we do have in the forthcoming games is Quality Olympic experience of winning medals. Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal, Mary Kom, Yogeshwar Dutt and most probably Sushil Kumar give you that comforting company which previous Indian Olympic squads were deprived of. We need to cash in on this, hope that their presence energizes everyone to give off their best and that is our best chance to come back with our best ever performance from Rio!
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