India at the 20th Asian Games

 The website says just over four days to go for the 20th Asian Games, being held this time in Nagoya city and the wider Aichi prefecture of Japan that it is part of. The Asian Games holds a special place in the hearts of every sports loving Indian simply because we willed it, we made it happen, way back in Delhi in 1951, when it was first held. It has been with us since we were a tiny tot as a country. 

We've come a long way from those days, both as a country and a sporting nation and the excitement this time around, with social media amplifying the build up manifold, is palpable. Expectations are running sky high. Not without reason. After all, we broke the 100-medal (106 to be precise) barrier in the last Asiad in Hangzhou, China.

Our trajectory as a sporting power of the continent, which was on the upswing since the '94 Hiroshima Games, had finally reached its destination. Now was the time to ensure we remain there and consolidate as much as we can. An encouraging fourth place at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, despite some of India's favourite sports not being there, has further boosted 

The sporting ecosystem and the fans and dare I say the athletes themselves, clearly believe that India is on the cusp of something special, further bolstered by an encouraging fourth place finish at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, despite some of India's favourite sports not being part of the schedule.

Ancy Sojan, the dimunitive woman long jumper from Keralam, has even gone to the extent of saying that she visualises herself atop the Asian Games podium listening to the national anthem while the IOA President, great quarter-miler of yesteryears herself, P.T.Usha, has said on record that "I am expecting the best ever performance." Then there was this media outlet which has argued for a 110-medal base case scenario among others.

Is there reason enough for this confidence or is it bravado? Have all aspects been thoroughly assessed? Specially the sporting ones.

Let's try and look at it objectively and as dispationately as possible.

A 118 athletes out of the contingent of 508 sent, will be involved in team sports and getting us a maximum of eight medals. Six among those are assured and will probably be gold (men's and women's cricket, hockey and kabaddi) while the men's volleyball and women's rugby teams are not that certain to medal.

Of the remaining 390, there are 30 shooters and 75 track and field athletes, leaving a total of 285 athletes in the remaining 30 sports that India are participating in, out of a total of 59.

Shooting and Track & Field remain key to India's success at the Games, accounting for 22 and 29 medals out of the 106 at the previous Hangzhou Games. So it will be important to do a deep dive into these two.

To begin with Indian Shooters will remain in contention for the same number of medal events as in Hangzhou, that is 27 out of the possible 28, this time around in Nagoya. They go into the Games with some proven performers, but also some real greenhorns at this level.

India's depth in the sport at the Asian level, should hold them good in the non-Olympic Team events, where they won a total of 10 of their 22 medals last time (five gold, four silver, one bronze). In the individuals, the two gold medalists from Hangzhou, Sift Kaur Samra and Palak Guliya, have not made it to the squad, but a host of multi medallists like Esha Singh, Aishwarya Tomar, Kynan Chenai, Ashi Choksey and Anantjeet Naruka have.

The challenges the Shooting Stars will have to guard against are quite a few. For one their men's pistol squad looks very thin on experience at this level and so does the women's shotgun troikas. In Rifle too, both among the men and women, success at this level does not has been almost non-existent among the majority. 

One huge positive going for the squad will be that pistol ace Manu Bhaker hasn't won an individual medal at the Asiad and will be determined to make it count. 

In Athletics, there are three major setbacks from last time. Two gold medallists in Neeraj Chopra and Annu Rani have withdrawn due to various reasons and a third Avinash Sable, is coming back from a long injury lay-off and is certainly not favourite for gold this time around. At most, these setbacks can be made up with some performers like Sreeshankar and Ancy upgrading their medal colour from last time.

Therefore that medal count of 51 from Shooting and Athletics is certainly under threat. Indian Shooters and Athletes will also have to contend with the fact that countries like Kazakhstan and Chinese Taipei have really upped their game in the last few years and hosts Japan, who had no medals in Shooting last time for example, will be going all guns blazing as hosts.

As we wrap this up, news comes in that a couple of our boys have already been eliminated in Teqball and then there will sports like Soft Tennis and Surfing, where we will be hard pressed to win medals.

That brings us to the remaining six, also some of our traditional strong sports, which boosted the Hangzhou tally i.e. Archery (9), Wrestling (6), Rowing (5), Squash (5), Boxing (4) and Badminton (3), accounting for 88 more athletes.

Even if we consider that these six will hold their levels, the losses in Shooting and Athletics will have to made up by about 190 athletes in 17 sporting disciplines for India to be sure of crossing the 100 mark this time around.

Here's hoping and praying they do!

Jaspal Rana- once in a lifetime athlete and human being

One of our generation's earliest sporting heroes, Jaspal Rana, who single-handedly brought the sport of Shooting into Indian public imagination, tragically passed away today, just weeks short of his 50th birthday.

Jaspal was my age but given the vagaries of work I used to call him Jaspal sir. If I recall correctly our first physical encounter was short of pleasant. In his lair outside the finals hall of the hallowed Karni Singh range, I was trying to whisk away some Indian shooters for press interviews ahead of one of the ISSF World Cups.

He suddenly appeared with a few acquaintances and told both the young shooter and me off in his trademark terse manner citing matches ahead. Being a fellow 1976'er and equally proud of my work and standing, I must admit I wasn't too pleased. He's not even coach (at that time) and it's not even his shooter, my hyperactive mind was buzzing in anger. Don't I know my work??

But of course, being in perpetual awe of Jaspal Rana, I remained shut and did as told. Also because secretly I agreed. Never a fan of distracting athletes in any manner ahead of a big tournament and certainly not by the Indian media (😜).

Over the 14 years that I worked for Shooting, I was fortunate enough to know Jaspal the man, over Jaspal the Shooting star. Several conversations, some long, some short. He was actually my biggest nightmare given my professional mandate with Shooting. But, despite having burnt bridges with all and sundry on their reported adverse comments on Shooting and the federation, Jaspal sir I never took issue with. And no, it was not only because of respect.

After spending the whole day reading his obituaries, I feel compelled today to divulge the reason. 

Most experts and pundits have done their job brilliantly in bringing out what Jaspal was to Indian Shooting. I will try to bring out a fan's perspective. A fan who was an athlete himself. A fellow 1976'er who was also brash in his days and hated to lose on the field of play.

What Jaspal brought to the Shooting range and among Indian shooters and the Indian shooting ecosystem was the killer instinct, the fierce competitiveness that separates the good from the great. 

A Shooting range is a very different place to any other field of play. Even Archery is out in the open and has therefore its natural sounds and light. A Shooting range is like a Zen arena. The only sound you will hear is that of pellets or the occasional rapid gun fire in a 25m range. It is an individual sport and focus and concentration are its hallmarks. People speak softly. Coaches whisper in the ears of wards for fear of giving tactics away. The only crowd present at times is parents and loved ones of the athletes themselves.

Jaspal Rana was antithetical to the general norms of a Shooting range. He was the Noah Lyles of Shooting. As in if you don't beat him, he will beat you. He wasn't there to search for theories, he was there to win. To win for India.

He had the rare ability to bring out the best from not only himself and his team, but also from his adversaries. He would intimidate them to perform better. It was like they would punch above their weight because they wanted to beat him. 

But they could never and they never will.  

Only the Shooting insiders will know that Jaspal Rana never taught Manu how to fire a pistol. He told me that she does it better than him. All Jaspal Rana did was become that one alter ego every young athlete wants to prove wrong. It was like if Jaspal said "tumse nahi hota to chor do. bohot aa jayenge" (if you are not capable then please leave the sport, there are many waiting in the wings), Manu would shoot to prove him otherwise.

He would argue with one and all. All for the good of Indian shooting. Never did I feel anything else, which is I why I could never tell him off. I failed professionally but I gained as a human being. To even someone like me, he would turn around and wave while driving as we passed each other on the road. That tells a lot about the man.

Indian Shooting will never be the same without Jaspal Rana.

A monumental week for Indian Athletics

Ever since Neeraj Chopra's historic men's javelin gold in Tokyo, belief has begun to seep in to Indian athletics. Of that there is no doubt. And if there were any, the last week would have dispelled all of it.

At the Federation Cup 2026 in Ranchi which is still under way , in stressful conditions where a marathon runner was disoriented to the extent that he was disqualified and received treatment, multiple long-standing barriers in Indian athletics, came crashing down.

Vishal TK, the lithe quarter miler from Kerala, began the show by becoming the first Indian ever to go below the 45sec mark, clocking a historic 44.98sec breaking his own national record of 45.12 in the process. 

Then Gurindervir Singh, the affable Sikh, smashed the 10.1sec barrier to win the 100m dash with a timing of 10.09sec over training mate and rival Animesh Kujur. The way the two went hammer and tongs at each other over the heats and the final, has now raised serious hopes of an Indian going sub-10 for the very first time.

Carrying on, the inimitable Tejaswin Shankar, shattered the 8000 point barrier to win it and if that was not enough, Madhya Pradesh mates Dev Kumar Meena and Kuldeep Kumar, enthralled the sparse gathering to a thrilling men's pole vault, becoming the first Indians ever to cross 5.45mts.

What's heartening about all those four performances is that they have all been steady incremental improvements achieved over a period of time through dedication and professional support. Dev Meena just the other day was clearing 4.10mts at the Khelo India Youth Games, for example.

The next big test for Indian athletics will be the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, where the standards are quite high. But even then we had an Avinash Sable scuttle the traditional Kenyan 1-2-3 in Steeplechase at the last Games and something on those lines can definitely be expected this time around.

There is momentum in Olympic sports now, as mentioned in my previous dispatch as well, and let's hope many more such barriers will be broken leading up to the LA Games.

A glimmer of Olympic hope at last

It was a fabulous Super Sporting Sunday at long last. Four performances by Indian athletes in different parts of the world, two of them gold winning and all of them wins, has warmed the hearts of all success starved fans of Olympic sports in the country and provided a glimmer of hope. 

First shooters Elavenil Valarivan and Arjun Babuta stormed to gold at the 10m air rifle mixed team competition of the Asian Rifle/Pistol Shooting Championship at home in Delhi's hallowed Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range with a world record effort. Critics would say it was a diminished field but the authority that the two seasoned pros now, displayed under the pressure of delivering at home, established that they are now shooting at a level second to none in the world.

Then news came in that the indomitable Tejaswin Shankar had shattered his own national Heptathlon record in Tianjin, China, enroute to gold with 5993 points, at the 12th Asian Indoor Athletics. His was the only gold of the five medals that India won at the meet and what made it special was the fact that he surpassed his record by close to 350 points in a confident display.

The third was by 20-year-old woman shuttler Devika Sihag, who clinched the Azerbaijan International in Baku with consummate ease, outclassing countrymate Navya Kanderi in the final. Although it wasn't a world class tournament, what made it special was that it came on the back of her maiden Super 300 victory in Thailand the week before. To win when you are expected to win, that too on the bounce is no mean feat.

Finally, great news came from back home in Bengaluru in the evening that India had defeated Netherlands 3-2 in the Davis Cup World Group first round qualifiers to be back among the sport's elite nations after 15 years. Dhakshineshwar Suresh did the star turn winning all his three matches, two singles and a double in partnership with senior pro Yuki Bhambri, bringing back memories of the days when Leander Paes used to  single-handedly win Davis Cup rubbers for the nation.

Why these four performances are particularly pleasing is because they have come from young athletes who ideally should be at the peak of their powers in the next three years. Even better, they seem to be having the right support system as well as competitive ecosystem in the country, which should help them improve every aspect of their game.

Most importantly, they seem to be in control of their performances and as is generally the case, weren't bogged down by the pressure of expectations. These are good signs.

Ela and Arjun will be pushed to go higher by not only by the world's top Olympic snipers but also with the quality back home. Devika has Tanvi Sharma, Anmol Kharb and Unnati Hooda as generation mates and Tejaswin has many top class performers like Murali Sreeshankar, Jyothi Yarraji, Avinash Sable and none better than former Olympic and World champ Neeraj Chopra alongside, when they travel together to compete for the nation.

Dhakshineshwar also has Sumit Nagal as travel mate and some young and talented boys like Karan Singh, Aryan Shah and Manas Dhamne, besides mentors Yuki, who will make him improve constantly to even get into the Indian Davis Cup team. 

The seeds planted years back have certainly begun to bloom and all credit should go to the Government of India, the Ministry of Sports, the National Federations and numerous private players who have provided crucial time, investment and support for this moment to arrive.

We can say it is definitely a beginning now but the crucial last mile would require meticulous planning. Everything is in place. If all get together, pull in the same direction, double digits in LA now looks achievable.

India needs to separate welfare sports from international professional sport

As India aspires to host the Olympic Games and goes on overdrive with its infrastructure development, it must also have a close look at the sports fitness and training situation of its athletes, given a respectable medal tally as hosts are a bare minimum requirement. In professional international sports, which the Olympics now represent (no longer for amateurs as it used to be), it is imperative that athletes are at prime fitness levels, in order to perform at their best. Basic one would say.

But it is here that India faces its greatest challenge. While those like access, exposure, infra, money and social security through jobs and endorsements have been overcome to a great extent over the past decade and a half, what has slipped through the cracks has been world class fitness and training to the most eligible.

Here it is pertinent to note that those like superstar Neeraj Chopra have spent a majority of their time since their youth days training abroad and with top proven foreign coaches. Thank God for it. So did Abhinav Bindra in a sport where the mental side needs to be developed more than the physical. 

The likes of Neeraj and P.V. Sindhu who have joined the league of global elite sportsmen and women, were also blessed with naturally fit body structures on which top level coaching and training were able to build on. Therefore their extended success.

It gives us an insight into what is required to be done when it comes to identifying and developing top sporting talent. What body structures should you be looking at. What social and genetic backgrounds should you be looking at.

Every sport at the highest international level requires particular physical characteristics. You can't be BIG if you are a distance runner, you better be tending towards lean. On that base you build endurance and strength. Similarly, you cannot be stunted if you are a pole vaulter or badminton player. 

If by chance you are, you better be exceptional in the sport. Like Jan Ove Waldner was in Table Tennis or Muggsy Bogues in Basketball or Messi or Maradona in Football, the likes of which cannot be produced by a system. Remember, the intention being to maximise the chances of success.

If you follow Indian sports as we do you will find a disturbing pattern in recent times. We must be the country with the maximum withdrawls on the Badminton tour, our top wrestler failed to make weight in the wrestling worlds, both our top distance runner and top women's hurdler are out of action for months due to injury and the footballers, supposed to be the fittest of the lot, are so injury prone that teams and franchises ensure minimum playtime for them. The lesser we speak of injury management of our cricketers, the better.

It brings us to the question as to why this is happening so often and what needs to be done to prevent it. What we are also seeing currently is that the transition from junior or youth to senior is not happening. We are into the second batch after Sindhu and three after Saina for example in badminton and there is no light. Single flames are flickering in solitude in Athletics, Archery, Boxing, Golf, Squash, Table Tennis, Tennis, Weight-lifting and Wrestling- all sports that India should have been global powerhouses by now, but have in-fact regressed in in recent times. Just check out the result of the worlds this year.

These are also sports which require extreme levels of physical fitness and hard training. Gone are the days when golfers used to be non-athletes. Yes, even golf today requires top levels of physical and mental fitness and training to develop power consistently over longer distances and four days playing almost every week.

It is clear therefore that we need to begin where it begins. To select athletes with known history of malnutrition is a sin committed on the athlete and the sport itself. To select athlete for all sports from the same regions is also very daft. Welfare sports needs to be separated from Professional International Sport.

Discipline then needs to be instilled on those with strong nutritional and genetic bases because even a genius cannot deliver without training. Naturally then, only those properly schooled would understand such ethos and buy into it. It is then that you make a start. Else mediocrity as it is now, will be our ethos and we will continue to woefully underperform.

With LA28 as goal, time for teenaged athletes to break through

Sport one has always believed, particularly of the international Olympic competitive kind, is for the young. The greatest of international sporting performances come about when an athlete is at the peak of their fitness and prowess, which is generally when they are very young, historically no more than 22-23 years of age. That is generally when young men and women in an ideal world, are either into college or have just graduated.

Boris Becker, the legendary German tennis star won Wimbledon when he was just 17. Kylian Mbappe the French Footballer was a world cup winner at 19 and Simone Biles the greatest ever US gymnast was world champ at 16. The likes of Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt were Olympic champion at 22-23. 

Even if you go further back, Mohammed Ali, arguably the world’s greatest ever sportsman, was 18 when he won gold at the Rome Olympics and the Romanian gymnastic legend Nadia Comaneci, was only 14 when she was Olympic gold and delivered the first ever perfect 10.0 score in history.

Therefore while tracking Olympic athletes and the probable stars of the next Olympics, in this case Los Angeles 2028, one is tempted to look at upcoming teenaged top performers, more than the experienced and established stars, if one were to derive a realistic idea of a nation’s chances in the quadrennial sporting showpiece.

What 2025 has told India in that regard is that all is not lost and hope there certainly is, but will the transition to champions happen? What indicators have we got?

For example, if Anmol Kharb (18) had beaten Akane Yamaguchi and Ratchanok Intanon, both icons in women’s badminton, back to back to win the Arctic Open in Finland, a Super 500 or a midranking tournament on the tour, one could have been excited. The likes of Saina Nehwal and P.V. Sindhu were doing such things at that age and more. 

Or if India’s newest women’s pistol sensation Suruchi Phogat, just 19 and a world number one, wins the world championship gold in Cairo in November, it will definitely make a bold statement on Indian shooting now being a permanent world power of the sport.

Breakthrough performances are needed and they are needed early. It not only gives the athletes and their supporting ecosystem loads of confidence, but also makes the world, your peers and fellow competitors look at you in a different way, helping you get results even on bad days.

Abhinav Bindra’s Beijing Olympics gold was preceded by a world championship gold two years earlier. Neeraj Chopra’s U20 World title was a forerunner to his Tokyo Olympics gold five years later.

India has a wealth of young world class athletes across Olympic sports at the moment, some teenaged, some just out, thanks to the huge fillip provided to the Olympic movement by the Government. 

So on a day when Himanshu Jakhar broke Neeraj Chopra’s longstanding national U20 record to qualify for the U20 worlds and become India’s newest entrant to the 80m club, one just hopes that the buds of 2025, are in full bloom come 2028. 

A day to remember for the Indian Olympic Movement- Neeraj crosses 90!

The date should and will be remembered for years to come. The indefatigable Neeraj Chopra, arguably one of the greatest to have ever competed in the men's javelin, threw 90.23m in his 5th attempt on May 16, 2025, at the Doha Diamond League elite competition, to become one among 26 ever to have crossed that hallowed mark. German Julian Webber (the 26th) did beat him on the night with a 91.06 for his sixth and final attempt, but the significance of Neeraj's fifth should not be lost on the Indian sports ecosystem.

Neeraj's Friday night effort at the Qatar Sports Club in Doha is akin to winning a Tennis Grand Slam or a Golfing Major or hitting the 2800 ELO rating in Chess for example. For the simple reason that only a select few in history achieve such feats in their respective sport. 

The mark is to be celebrated not because it takes a monkey of everyone's back as the champ himself put it, but because Neeraj continues to prove that Olympic and World champions in the truest sense can quite easily be produced in this country. The dedication, love and passion and most importantly this constant urge to remain consistent and get better regardless of competition results, is what makes Neeraj's career a stuff of dreams as far as Indian sport is concerned.

Remember he is a former Olympic and World Champion, who has not won gold in the big ones in the past two years and while that has the possibility of doubts creeping in, Neeraj has just become better and better at a personal level. 

The Doha DL also saw Parul Chaudhary, an Asian Games champ, better her women's 3000m steeplechase national record by a significant margin of over 2 seconds and qualify for the world championships in Tokyo later in the year. No mean feat in itself on the same parameters as Neeraj's above.

Also on the day, teenager and chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, won the Superbet Classic in Romania and the India U-19 Football team under coach Bibiano Fernandez registered a fluent and pleasing to the eye 3-0 win over Maldives to make the SAFF U-19 final against Bangladesh.

We need more of such barriers as Neeraj has broken, to be breached of course. Many more. 

The Shooters have shown spunk this year but that has been expected over the years. Other than that not much of note at the international level for Indian Olympic sports except some notable performances like that of Deepika Kumari's World Cup stage gold reiterating her world-class credentials and yet another Olympian Anush Agarwalla, coming up with a personal best Dressage score in an Equestrian Grand Prix in Germany on his new horse Etro. These yet again pointing to individual determination and hunger, to get better and succeed.

We hope Neeraj's throw inspires all our athletes and support staff across sports like Badminton, Tennis, Boxing, Wrestling, Table Tennis, Golf, Swimming and Squash, besides Athletics, to step up their game and deliver on the big stages. The respectable position, as we as a great nation of the world deserve, on the Olympic medal tally, looks within reach thanks to Neeraj. It is up to us to go and grab it.

Events galore, but performance upgrade in Indian sport still a mirage

A fresh international season for almost all sports are now well and truly underway, with the Olympic year now well and truly in the background. And by all accounts a huge dichotomy has probably taken firm roots as far as sports in India- the non-cricket version of it, is concerned.

Sports events are now national policy. Be it the excuse of the Khelo India scheme, mushrooming of myriad leagues, age-group tournaments across gender and inclusivity and of course regular domestic and international tournaments of all and any denomination. 

It has come to a situation that on a 2-21/2 page sports spread in any leading daily newspaper, only 30% of sporting activities happening in the particular edition city can get covered. A part of the reason is also commercial but most of it is because there is actually no space or personnel to cover them.

Which is great the discerning neutral will say. India is playing a lot and therefore a sports culture is taking shape and therefore the results will come. Not quite that simple.

To organise and host sporting events is just a tiny piece of the jigsaw. While it is very helpful as they give athletes more opportunities to play and who can be against that, but is there a plan or is the plan something other than sport. Because if its not purely focussed on growing sport and establishing a sports culture, it is doomed to fail. For example if the intention is money laundering or generation and monopoly over entertainment content for example.

Establishing a sporting culture in the society at large which naturally draws a child to pick up one or many sports, has several other key elements besides event participation, hosting and organising, and most of it includes effective political Governance, outside the purview of this forum.

So even as we are flooded with sporting results of all kinds coming in from around the country and indeed the world- the sum total of all the noise and activities with our official 2036 Olympic bid at its heart, is not being reflected on the results that matter. In-fact I dare say that there has been a consistent decline all around save maybe a couple at max.

In Badminton, a sport that gave the most hope and joy to Indians in the millennium, given its long and natural association, connect and popularity with the urban society across India, our shuttlers don't not only win anything of note, they seemed to be exiting en masse within the first or second rounds. Its almost unbelievable that we were Thomas Cup champions just three years back. 

While Badminton has seen the most shocking decline in standards and results given what it had already achieved, other hitherto profitable (from top medals perspective) sports of India like Boxing and Wrestling also see no hope in the horizon. The top news coming out of these sports nowadays are only political and administrative in nature, which is telling.

The idea at the moment, seems to be, we get 6-7 medals as it is in Olympics, let's add cricket, compound archery, squash and a few tweaks here and there by influencing IOC through our IOC members and get to double digits and go to town with it as huge achievement. However, sometimes when your intention is to cover the face, your butt might get exposed, so it's important to be aware of that.

The other problem is the league mania which seems to have gripped the nation. This year is looking at, at least three new franchise leagues in sports like Shooting, Archery, 3*3 Basketball, among others.

Not one league in India, whether commercially successful or not, has been able to throw up one single athlete of international stature, in now about two decades of their existence. 

They have to still drag stars from previous generations into active play, to draw fans and revenue. Naturally, because new stars are not emerging. Naturally again, because stars emerge only when they perform exceptionally and not like clones of each other maintaining status quo.

Leagues are required in sport to develop and provide opportunities to young upcoming talent. They ensure depth of talent, increasing reach of the sport and become a pathway to the real deal which is international glory. 

In India, Football, Kabaddi, Badminton, Volleyball, Table Tennis, Tennis and even Cricket, declined in international standing after the introduction of their leagues. The data is very clear. Therefore something is wrong and the approach and vision on leagues needs a major overhaul.

Rishabh Yadav and Jyothi Sureka did win the compound mixed team gold at the year's first Archery World Cup stage in Florida which did not see the participation of powerhouses Korea, right after it was announced as an Olympic sport. Sourav Kothari also became Billards World Champion for a second time. And of course a new teenaged star in Shooting has emerged with Suruchi winning unprecedented back to back World Cup stage golds showing true class. 

It is also mandated policy nowadays to always be positive in the end and therefore I thought it apt to end with good news. Well we all are positive aren't we? Which is why we are here and all still trying. But what is required for Indian sports is not just positivity, but clarity, rationality and sanity

Moving on from Paris

The Paralympics 2024 concluded the over a month-long sporting festivities in Paris and Indian fans and followers of Olympic sports, still a number which has not reached critical mass, will come away with mixed feelings. More sad than happy, I dare say.

While at the Paralympics, Indian special athletes returned a historic best ever haul of 29 medals including seven gold (9 silver/13 bronze), the performance at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games saw India win one silver and five bronze medals, their third best returns ever.

So Tokyo, as alluded to in the previous write-up on this platform, could not be surpassed or even equalled and the final rank of 71 matched our worst ever in the standings, equalling that of the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Games.

Shooting redeemed itself after two consecutive medal less Olympics, with three bronze medals, representing the highest ever haul in a single sport for India at the Games. Manu Bhaker became India's latest Olympic sporting sensation, bagging two bronze medals to become the only Indian to win multiple medals at a single Olympics. Neeraj was beaten to gold by an astounding Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan while the men's Hockey team defended their bronze medal from the previous Games, to their huge credit. Aman Sehrawat, the only Indian male wrestler at the Games, also continued the sport's tradition of having won an Olympic medal in every Games since 2008, with a super bronze in the men's 57kg freestyle category.

Indian athletes also finished the dreaded fourth in as many as six events, highlighting what could have been.

However to sum it up, there really isn't any excuse. Not any more. Not from the previous Games actually. If one wants to be overtly critical, one can say that a majority of decision makers in sports in this country have no idea about athletes and competitive professional international sport and that we lack a sports culture, but even then such a poor return could be justified about two decades back.

The sports culture, ecosystem, infrastructure and corporate and Government support has grown humongous from the time Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual Olympic gold in Beijing 16 years ago. This poor tally now means there is something fundamentally wrong in the kind of athletes we are choosing to represent ourselves on the global stage. And the athletes themselves are not responsible for that.

This platform has always strongly believed that sports should be inculcated in the ethos of the youth of this country as a means to excel despite hardships and reverses. As an individual pursuit more than a joint pursuit, which instills among the athletes the belief that they are in it for themselves, to prove they are the best for themselves, not for anybody else. Sport should not be seen as a means for acquiring social security or upliftment or to promote State parochialism.

To drive such selfish pursuit of excellence the Government should provide all necessary support, not to athletes who have performed on the international stage, but to children, ensuring that talented kids at a very young age are identified and then provided an enabling environment of education, nutrition, coaching and a happy upbringing in order to ensure that they fully realize their sporting potential.

Otherwise, with the current situation, double digits in Los Angeles in four years time will also be a bubble which will burst.

500 days to Paris

So we actually surpassed our previous best and had undoubtedly our best ever Olympics in the aberration year 2021 (finally) in Tokyo. Neeraj Chopra probably demonstrated to India's budding athletes that if you stay honest to your sport and give your best every time, fairytales do happen.

Nearing two years to that unbelievable high and exactly 500 days ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympics, and on a day when India's Olympic Queen P.V.Sindhu suffered her third consecutive first round loss from a major world tournament, the heart yearns for more. Yes, still and for even more.

But will Paris deliver or will Tokyo2020 remain an aberration in every possible sense? Only time will tell. Let's try and envision till then, once again as realistically as possible, as to exactly where we stand today.

The Badminton medal onus has now surely shifted to the doubles pairs. One of Sat-Chi or Gayatri-Teressa seem to be our best bets on current form. Singles no longer looks like a realistic expectation.

Today also saw the opening ceremony of the women's world boxing championships in New Delhi. The Indians at home looked fit and hungry to roar. However with both the women's and men's pugilists put together, we still have not moved beyond a couple of medal hopes where around 20 are the maximum that can be garnered.

In Athletics, Neeraj continues to be a contender naturally but a couple of long-jumpers answering to the names of Jeswin Aldrin and Murali Sreeshankar have raised some genuine hopes. Tejinder Toor is also around and is becoming an experienced international shot-putter. Athletes like Aishwarya Mishra and Shalini Singh have also made noises. Long very long calls still.

Hockey we continue to blow hot and cold and you still never know despite a tremendous run of four wins at home by a new-look team against the likes of Germany and Australia. Shooting continues also to be at you never know status.

In the others where we have traditionally hoped for Olympic medals, none including Archery, Golf, Tennis are any better hopes than they ever were.

The biggest tragedy at this point however is Wrestling, where things have come to a complete halt with India team selectees are not going for tournaments to represent their country. 

A double-digit medal haul should have been the bare minimum as a fan expectation after Tokyo2020. It will take huge work in 500-days to get there I think, although a meeting to discuss the same as already happened last month, which one has to admit, is an improvement from earlier times.

We can match our best Olympic effort at Tokyo 2020!

With the Australian Women's Softball Team being the first set of athletes to land in The Land of the Rising Sun, Japan, on June 1, 2021, the much anticipated Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games seems to be finally happening. Finally because it almost did not and certainly not in its original year 2020 because of the Cover-19 global pandemic. But now in 2021, with the pandemic not quite still eliminated, the Games look to be on track, albeit under unprecedented rules and regulations, prime among them being the absence of international visitors to the Games.

Be that as it may, the rules will once again be same for all participating Athletes, and we fans can trust them to get the gloom off the globe, come July 24, 2021.

But what about our dear India and its Olympic prospects?? Time for predictions now, but first a bit of analysis.

Let us look at some of the realistic medal prospects- the kinds that can win a medal in any top flight international competition on their day and have done so multiple times before. It is difficult to predict a Sakshi Malik kind of medal, but a P.V. Sindhu kind can certainly be taken into consideration.

Lets begin with our national sport of Hockey. Both the Men's and Women's team are participating, the Men for the 20th time in the Summer Games, and it is the Men who look more the medal prospects than the Women. They have trained throughout the pandemic and have also had some good competition and results traveling against defending Champions Argentina. But the Games will be a different ball game and the first target would be to make it to the Quarter-finals stage from the six-team group, where we will be up against former Champions and three-time World Champions Australia, Asian Games Champion Japan, and the likes of New Zealand who have given us grief before, besides the Argentines themselves.

Then there is Saikhom Mirabai Chanu in the Women's 49kg Weightlifting, which at this stage looks like a certainty. She holds the world record in clean and jerk, which she achieved just three months before the Games and with the likes of North Korea, Malaysia and Thailand not there for various reasons, she looks good for even Gold.

Wrestling, another traditional strong sport for India, has four men and four women qualified for India. It will be fair to say that among them Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat are the overwhelming favorites for medals, even Gold, but other young talent like Deepak Punia in the 86kg, might be the surprise package.

Of the nine-contenders in Boxing, another sport where India has won medals in recent years at the Games, Amit Phangal in the terrier 52-kg weight and Pooja Rani among the women in the 75-kg class, look the brightest prospects on recent form and performance. Vikas Krishan and Mary Kom also bring a lot of experience to the contingent, but in the Games we always tend to favor the young ones.

In Archery, Badminton and Table Tennis, India have four contenders each. 

The husband and wife pair of Atanu Das and Deepika Kumari lead the challenge in Bow and Arrow in the individual recurve. Deepika has been a perenial  prospect now, but Atanu has shown sparkling international form with a first World Cup stage gold in Mexico recently and is going into his second Games, which bodes well.

World Champion P.V.Sindhu leads India's Badminton challenge and will always remain a contender at the Big Ones. Say Praneeth is in the Men's Singles while Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chiraag Shetty make up an exciting new young Men's Doubles pair who are set to have a long career beyond the Games.

Table Tennis has the old warhorse Sharath Kamal along with young and exciting Sathiyan Gnasekharan for company in the Men's Singles while Manika Batra and Suthirtha Mukherjee will look forward to an Olympic experience.

There is also a lot of talk about Neeraj Chopra in the Men's Javelin in Athletics, Bhavani Devi in Fencing and Foouad Mirza in Equestrian, but will they be ready for such a HUGE occasion is the big question. Someone like Neeraj has not competed in the top flight for two years now and that cannot be the best way to prepare for the Games.

That brings us to Shooting and here India sends a very competitive 15-member squad. All the 15 on their day have won medals at the highest level of the sport. In particular the likes of Saurabh Chaudhary and Elavenil Valarivan seem unstoppable and in a zone at the moment and with the back-up of the Mixed Events, look very good prospects.

The likes of Pranati Nayak in Gymnastics, Nethra Kumanan in Sailing as also K.T.Irfan in Race-Walking will be disheartened at a passing mention as well, but at this big a stage, they really do not have performances or pedigree to go vie for a medal, one feels.

That kind of sums up our medal prospects, including the very long shots and remember, everything has to fall in place for everyone during the Games for us to maximize on our potential. And the whole world will be giving their very best of course.

My guess therefore is that we will win between 5-6 medals including Gold at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Yes, we can certainly match our best ever effort of the London 2012 Games. Amen to that!

Sports is finally back in India....long road ahead!

 It took more than seven months for competitive sporting action to finally resume in India, with the All India Football Federation (AIFF) taking the lead by hosting the Hero I-League Qualifiers 2020. The tournament got underway in West-Bengal on October 8, 2020. It features five teams competing over 10-games in 11 days for the lone spot to get into the Hero I-League 2020-21 season, effectively now the Tier-2 League in Indian Football.

While due credit needs to be given to the AIFF, seven-months and counting is a long time to stay away from competition and it will take at least six more months from resumption for players to get into top gear. 

Take the IPL for example. The generous dollops of extra-flab on some players have been topics of banter and internet chatter in recent times. Although the four football teams on show on October 8th appeared relatively better-off, but that is probably due to the different nature of the sport as compared to T20 cricket.

Meanwhile, crowds have begun to be allowed in international sporting arenas all across the globe. Bundesliga has allowed it. The European Super Cup game between Bayern Munich and Sevilla was played in front of a 10,000 strong crowd. Even the French Open Tennis major is currently underway with restricted crowd entry. Over across in Japan as well, restricted spectator entry has been allowed in baseball and football and Pennsylvania state in the US as of today has allowed crowds of up to 7,500 back in their stadiums. Plans are also afoot in countries like Australia and England.

Meanwhile international sporting action is also increasing by the day. The Denmark Open resumes international badminton action from October 13 with four Indians- Kidambi Srikanth, Shubhankar Dey, Lakshay Sen and Ajay Jayaram competing. There has also been two world records smashed in Atheletics when Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia and Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda broke the Women's 5000m and the Men's 10,000m records quite comfortably in a meet in Valencia, Spain. Formula 1, Moto GP, Cycling, Basketball, Golf and Chess are some of the other sports that continue to see top level competition.

Which begs the question as to what about the others? When will popular Olympic sports like Archery Shooting, Hockey, Volleyball, Wrestling, Weightlifting, Boxing, Table Tennis, Swimming, Rowing, Equestrian etc. resume? When will any sporting action apart from the Football, begin in India? Not all are contact sports. Is there a date? Is there a roadmap? No one even asks the questions nowadays. Least of all, the players, who should be the primary losers.

Why the Covid-19 impact will be tougher on the Indian Athlete

Almost exactly a year ago, I was lamenting the bleak prospects of Indian athletes at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games, which would have been, if not for the raging global Covid-19 pandemic, underway now.

But with varying forms of Lockdowns being imposed in various parts of the world since January 2020 and an otherwise averseness towards gatherings and congregations, the quadrennial grand celebration of Sport has been postponed by a year, a huge decision by the International Olympic Council (IOC), a rarity in itself (only the fourth time it has been done) in the 124 years of glorious Olympic History. Eventually the correct one, one has to say.

Now more than six months since it was first detected in Wuhan, China, the pandemic continues to ravage lives and livelihood around the world, albeit in very few nations on a large enough scale. Sports and athletes were an obvious casualty in all of this. No Olympics! No Wimbledon! No Champions League! That in itself says a lot. But spare a thought for India's top athletes. The pandemic has been and will continue to be far tougher on them. Here is why.

India imposed one of the most brutal nationwide lockdowns on March 24, 2020, with about 500+ cases recorded all across the country at the time.  Though intentions were to break the chain of transmission and shore up medical infrastructure, they did not prove enough, with the result that the entire country of close to 1.4 billion people have been in various forms of Lockdown (now called Unlock) for nearly five months now.

With severe restrictions on inter/intra-state travel and movement, as also the need to stay safe, India's top athletes have been majorly limited to doing training routines from their homes and/or accessing personally or locally available sporting infrastructure, as best and as much they can. Even a college sophomore would tell you that that simply would not be enough for them to get back their competitive edge in international sport.

On the other hand, their global competition has a head-start. There is a Cricket Test series now into its third Test, going on in England, the world's leading golfers including Tiger Woods have already teed off on the PGA and European Tours, major Football leagues in Europe are in full-swing and even top level Tennis has had more than a couple of Tournaments played. Ok, if you want to get specific about Football, leagues all across Asia in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Syria, Japan etc. are also in full-swing.

Even though most international competition in every other major Olympic sport is not scheduled to resume before September, elite athletes of most top African, Asian, European and South American,  nations have resumed training in full-swing and in some cases competitions as well. Hardly do people in India know that there was a competition called the Impossible Games in Oslo in June where top athletes from even Kenya, besides Europe, were able to compete in long-distance races. Or that our very own Shraboni Nanda (who is based there) competed in the Velocity Fest athletics championships in Jamaica along with the best sprinters of the world. Or even that athletic competitions have already happened or are currently on in places like Austria, The Netherlands etc.

Some Governments have gone the extra mile. Colombia, for example, have already packed-off 150 of their Tokyo 2020 bound athletes to Spain for training and competitions. Brazil, as hard hit by the pandemic as India, also has a similar plan finalized for 200 of its top athletes.

International sport in the best of times is a tough tough grind. And if you find yourself in it as the most rusty and lacking in competitive edge, it could mean the proverbial mountain to climb and the results disastrous.

There was a video recently doing the rounds posted by India's top paddler Sharath Kamal, where he appears like schoolboy talent making inexplicable errors, having resumed sparring after almost four months. If this is the state of India's best paddler and one of its most experienced international athletes, you can imagine what it would be for the rest of the crowd.

1 Year to Go for Tokyo2020 and its gotten Worse!

First of all, believe me when I say that it gives me no joy to be the harbinger of rotten news. But the Indian Olympic movement of which I am perhaps the most passionate proponent, more often than not compels me to be so.

Social Media all around today is celebrating the "1 Year to Tokyo2020" theme and right from the host city to around the globe, the spirit is efusive. So it is in India, but with close to nothing to celebrate on the Olympic Sporting front...or lets say...nothing new to celebrate on that front....which is not good news for our prospects at Tokyo 2020.

Since my last post, we have had a new (and might I add young and energetic) Sports Minister and the fact that, that is the only new development I have to share on the sports front is a giveaway.

The scary part being that the list of medal hopefuls I had listed down just three months back, has further pruned itself down. To be fair to the new Sports Minister, he has already started talking in terms of the 2024 Games.

Folks and fans might be wandering what went wrong. The simple answer to that is nothing went wrong. Just that nothing changed. Just that everything remained the way it always used to be. Politics, nepotism, blinkered vision, corruption, biased scouting and selection....just the regular things.

Therefore the results will remain the way they always used to be as well.

A Look at India's Tokyo 2020 Medal Hopefuls & How They Stack Up!

It is about time that you have a fair idea of your medal hopefuls at the quadrennial celebration of sports we call the Olympics. With Tokyo 2020 over a year away and qualifiers and quota events well underway, here's a peak into India's medal hopefuls as they stand.

Archery

Deepika Kumari is still our best bet and what a fairytale that would be if the two-time Olympian and former world number one is able to keep her tryst with an Olympic medal at Tokyo. A prodigious talent she played her first Olympics at the age of 17 and after having humbling experiences at both her Olympic appearances, she showed glimpses of becoming a hardened pro with her World Cup Gold over a classy field at Salt Lake City last year. If anyone can take on the might of the Koreans and Taiwanese and Russians and Chinese among others, it is she.

Athletics

Well K.T. Irfan the workhorse race-walker from Kerala, became the first Indian athlete to qualify for Tokyo 2020, which automatically qualifies him as a 'hopeful' however he has to deliver super-human improvement in his timings if he has to even think of a podium finish. But Irfan is an honest athlete and we wish him all the best. Neeraj Chopra and Hima Das are the only two serious medal contenders as things and their respective throws and timings stand. If comparisons are made with the previous Olympics, then it is certainly an improvement for Indian athletics, but still one would like to believe, not good enough.

Badminton

This has to be the biggest shock as after a brilliant decade of upswing, sudden stagnation has stepped in to Indian badminton and on current form, India is looking at only one medal hopeful in the form of P.V. Sindhu, who incidentally was also the sole medal winner last time around. One would have thought that Tokyo 2020 would have seen an Indian badminton squad full of world beaters and multiple medal hopefuls, but it is not to be certainly as far as Tokyo is concerned.

Shooting

Shooting, on current form and results has to be the brightest hope for a medal at Tokyo for India. Cynics would say, so was it last time around and we all know that the Shooting squad came back empty-handed, however in the practical world of sports you cannot discount consistent world beating performances and high world rankings. Indian shooters currently hold three world records in Olympic events and that is, beside being unprecedented for the sport in India, no mean feat. Apurvi Chandela, Saurabh Chaudhary and Angad Sir Singh Bajwa are the athletes holding them and if you add someone like the classy Anjum Moudgil to the mix, there is no reason why India cannot renew its date with an Olympic medal in Shooting.

Weightlifting

Mirabai Chanu will take forward a long regional tradition and given a self-imposed Olympics ban by Thailand, is the lone and foremost medal hopeful for India in the sport in Tokyo. A former world champion, which means she knows how to win on the big stage and having shifted seamlessly into a higher weight category, this 24-year old from Manipur looks good for an Olympic podium, all other factors working for her till D-Day.

Wrestling

Those in the know swear by woman wrestler Vinesh Phogat, however on current form only Bajrang Punia ticks all the boxes of an Olympic medal hopeful. Consistent over two world championships spread over five years and having won medals at almost every top level competition, the 25-year old world number 1 in his 65 Kg category from Jhajjar, Haryana, looks a prime contender for an Olympic medal. He has not only improved technically but has also displayed the right frame of mind to put it across any opponent on a wrestling mat. With a solid pedigree and support system to back him, his medal seems a certainty if ever the term can be used for sport.

Given the situation, an improvement over Rio 2016 is what India should be realistically targeting come Tokyo 2020.

'Khelo India' is here but 'Jeeto at Olympics India' still looks distant

'Khelo India' was the recent big ticket sports policy implementation with an eye to achieving Olympic Glory, undertaken by the country. In a nutshell it was a kind of Junior National Games organized in the capital involving school going athletes amidst much fanfare, as is the norm of the times. While the intent is to be lauded, the fact that 'its the best idea they could come up with'  should be a cause of concern.

This is the year when we get into the proper Olympic cycle for Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016 still looks so recent. Soon Tokyo 2020 quota and qualifying events will begin and before you know it the Olympics will be upon us again. How much have we progressed in our quest for Olympic glory? What are the chances in Tokyo?....or beyond?

It will be safe to comment at this point that Tokyo will not be our best ever Olympic year. That would mean surpassing the six medals we won in London 2012, which looks quite improbable, to put it bluntly. There is good news coming through in sports and we probably have also been able to maintain the rising graph, but Big Wins, specially in Olympic events continue to elude us, which is a problem. Those Big Wins uplift a total ecosystem of athletes and administrators both financially and psychologically. Gives us the chance of having more than one medal hopeful in a given sport and therefore a better chance at medals overall.

Take Badminton for example, by far our strongest Olympic sport for a while. Outside the Olympics, The All England, the World Championships, Asian Games and Asian Championships are the Big Four in World Badminton to win apart from the Thomas, Uber and Sudirman Cups at the Team level. India still have a complete blank in all of the above in recent times. Sindhu and Saina no doubt have come the closest to winning Big and you cannot hold anything against those two masterclasses....the bottomline however is, we haven't won. I think the Commonwealth Games is the best that we have won apart from the BWF series events, which we are very strong at but they are basically pro tour events with very low memory-value globally. So that needed to happen before something pleasantly unprecedented could be expected in Tokyo. Recent performances at the Badminton Asia Championships do not inspire that confidence.

A pleasant development has been a Bronze by Aruna Budda Reddy at the Gymnastic World Championships in Women's Vault. 'Veteran' Ashish Kumar also reached a final at the World's which basically tells us that there is now a semblance of a gymnastics system perpetuated in the country. Its a breakthrough medal and no mean feat make no mistake about it- being the first for the country at a World level competition. Gymnastics gives you a shot at a lot of medals at the Olympics and its being an addition to the our list of medal hopeful sports is a good development. Kudos to all those responsible to bring it to this level. Am sure there is a long way to go still but at least a start has been made.

Shubhankar Sharma has also burst into the world Golf scene with two magnificent victories on the European Tour across two continents and both away from home at the ripe young age of 21. His emergence along with Anirban Lahiri's continued impressive showing on the world leading PGA tour bodes well for the sport's chances from an Indian perspective at Tokyo. The Golfing graph of India has also been on a consistent upswing at a global level and we fans can take heart but again that Major victory, those big wins on the PGA Tour remain elusive, which leaves a medal in the Olympics more to chance than conviction.

The other 'strength' Olympic sports of India like Archery, Wrestling, Boxing, Shooting, Tennis, Weightlifting and Hockey are in a state of stagnation, as in either at the same level globally or a few notches down from their peaks which is the major reason for my predictions for Tokyo. The odd good news will trickle through at times in these disciplines, but nothing which can make the fan really excited on Olympic prospects. Women's tennis and Shooting have shown some spark at junior and youth levels and it remains to be seen how the lot progresses.

What is happening at a real slow pace, inhibiting the progress of the Olympic movement in the country, is access to quality infrastructure and training. The odd facilities are found nowadays mainly in urban pockets but clearly it needs to happen across the length and breadth of the country in a planned and systematic manner with clearly defined targets. In the hinterlands its still more passion than programme.

What is killing our Olympic prospects further is the proliferation of sports agents, before a system of achieving real global success at a consistent level has been formulated. The buying and selling of players as commodities for commercial gains, is taking precedence over everything else. Take the example of a Dheeraj Singh- the India U-17 goalkeeper who earned a name for himself with some eye-catching performances. The fact that he had a long way to mature before trying his luck at the tough pro-football lands of Europe was fairly evident. But he took the call to abandon regular game time with senior professional squads and instead hunt for a trial call from any however nondescript 'european brand' club. This is clearly 'agents' at work in the search for quick money. Someone's got it all wrong.

So till the above anomalies are corrected, lets keep the passion going and hold on to the few sparks we have, because thats the best we fans can do.

The World Leading Throw in Women's Shot Put This Year Belongs To An Indian!

The kind of sporting event which compels you to write as an Indian sports fan happened in Jinhua, China on Monday, April 24, 2017. Manpreet Kaur, a 26-year old from Ambala, Punjab, not only struck Gold in the Women's Shot Put at the Asian Grand Prix meet, but also registered a world leading throw with her effort. Now, a world leading mark registered just four months into the year is no big deal one would say, but for our breed it is. Sports fans in India have grown up reading or hearing about such news every year at least twice or thrice....but one would be hard pressed to recall an Indian ever having achieved this in Track and Field. Maybe during the times of P.T.Usha, but yours truly at least can't recall even her being the protagonist of such news ever. This kind of news generally has significance in World Track and Field as it makes competitors and other stakeholders sit up and take notice. They assess or reassess their goals for the year, particularly in the year of a World Championship, which by the way is just four months away.

For the record, Manpreet achieved a distance of 18.86 m, which to put it in perspective, would have earned her a creditable 6th place at the Rio 2016 summer Olympics. What her performance in Jinhua also did was make her qualify automatically for the World Championships. The only cause of concern would be an improvement of close to a meter in less than six months. Even more heartening to the fan would be the performance of Neeraj Kumar, the junior Javelin World Champion, who won Silver with a fling of 82.11 m. This is below his personal best of 86.48 set last year, but its great to see consistency with distances coupled with international medal winning performances. Here's wishing both Manpreet and Neeraj a great World Championships.

Badminton continues taking one giant stride after another for the Indian Olympic movement when in this month's Singapore Open Super Series Men's Final, for the first time in the history of Indian and world badminton, two Indians competed for a Super Series title. B. Sai Praneeth eventually got the better of Kidambi Srikanth to claim his first Super Series title in three closely fought sets, but Indian badminton had been already declared the winner before the final. Indians have already claimed two Super Series titles this year with P.V. Sindhu's win in the Women's final of the Indian Open against her Olympic Final nemesis Carolina Marin of Spain.

SSP Chawrasia, the diminutive gleamy eyed Kolkata golfer also continued to delight the golfing world with his mastery of the home courses, defending his Indian Open Golf title, this time at the newly laid Gary Player course at the DLF Golf & Country Club in Gurugram, Haryana. This was his second title in five months and an astonishing fourth European Tour title to go with his six Asian Tour  wins. Through sheer simplicity and the rare ability to enjoy the big moments, SSP has endeared himself to the Indian golfing audiences in particular and has clearly maximized his ability, talent and passion for the game on the international stage. Such players draw more kids to the game. Anirban Lahiri meanwhile continues to impress in his sophomore year on the PGA tour, the toughest in the game. He is in the top 70 on the money list, which means he has had top finishes. This to follow a great rookie year on the tour, bodes well.

India also had a great Shooting World Cup stage at home at the Dr. Karni Singh Ranges in New Delhi with star shooter Jitu Rai's Gold in the 50m Pistol and an Indian 1-2 in the event with Amanpreet winning Silver, being the showstopper. Ankur Mittal's Silver in Double Trap was also classy, given a top field. Ankur followed that up with a Gold in the second stage held a month later in Acapulco Mexico. Pooja Ghatkar continued her good form from last year to land a World Cup Bronze in the Women's 10m Air Rifle while Sheeraz Sheikh in the Men's Skeet displayed considerable improvement with a final round show, eventually finishing 6th.

Amidst all this though, one sport which has caught a new kind of imagination of the sports buffs in India has been football. Slowly but surely there has been a new kind of fan-pull for Indian football. Some of the fans maybe the same, but the pull is different this time. All this could be due to the 'push from the very top' and great media mileage generated through ISL to begin with and then taken to a different level by recent successes of the Indian team and a fairytale called Aizawl FC. The team from the tiny north-eastern hill state of Mizoram, at one point not supposed to play in the country's top FIFA recognised football league, today needs a point to be crowned champions of the 10th Hero I-League, after a string of heroic performances. It couldn't have come at a better time with probably the biggest single-sport event the country has ever seen, the FIFA U-17 World Cup, scheduled to be held in the country in October this year. All these big media events could only do a world of good to Indian football.

The exciting thing happening in Indian sports though is not restricted to the increasing regularity of world class performances across various Olympic sports on a world-class stage. What is exciting is that there is lots happening outside the realm of Olympic sports as well, which are probably sowing the first seeds to national sporting/outdoor culture. Recently, Northern Motorsports, the guys who pioneered off-track and off-road motorsport through events such as the Raid-de-Himalayas and the Desert Storm, organized the India Baja 2017, which this year became the first Indian Rally to be a part of the Dakar Challenge series. The second edition of the Indian Open Surfing has also been announced and is expected to see more than 100 surfers take part in the pristine and beautiful beaches of Mangalore. Add all the above to the 'holy' (there is always something holy in India) sport of cricket and the signs are good. Do not forget the mission....a top ten finish at the summer Olympics:))

The Quest for Glory at Tokyo 2020 Has to Begin Now!

Its been a while no doubt. You can attribute it to the Olympics hangover. That is the beauty of the Games. It keeps you in awe even if your own nation is not quite setting the Olympic arenas on fire. It was a disappointing Indian performance to say the least. We returned with two medals and at one point, the horror days of the 80s n 90s were coming back to haunt at the possibility of a blank medals return, but thankfully Sakshi Malik and PV Sindhu saved the blushes much to the elation of their 1.3 billion countrymen and women. Kudos to them!

The Athletes are least to blame for the 'Rio Debacle' though. Two-third of them shouldn't have been there in the first place. The rest did manage to elevate the competitiveness of Indian athletes overall from the previous games and in many more sporting disciplines as well. The fact that the desired results did not materialize can be put down to bad talent management. Take the case of Saina Nehwal who clearly played with an injury. Or the shooters, who despite shooting at their highest competitive level at any Olympics collectively as a squad, failed to win a medal. A report chaired by a committee headed by Abhinav Bindra post the games, basically put it down to training and fitness issues and lack of proper monitoring of the same by the national federation. Contrast that to the Italian shooters who despite not quite burning the ranges in the years leading up to the Olympics, got results where it mattered most. Talent needs to be managed scientifically without any compromise on discipline, in a way that performances peak at the big stage. To make matters worse, we even commit self-goals in pursuing Olympic medals as we did with the mess created with the Narsingh Yadav issue.

Clearly, a comprehensive and focussed agenda for success is missing. The good part is that the Government seems to have woken up to the situation and post the Olympics, the right noises have been made and on-ground proactivity displayed, which was not the case earlier. What they will also do well, is to realize, that today in India, we thankfully have 13 individual Olympic medalists very much at hand to lean back upon for advice, apart from the hockey veterans. We also have a double Olympic winning coach in Pullela Gopichand available. They need to lead our Olympic Mission from the forefront and not just be appointed to showpiece positions without empowerment.

There is frankly no reason why we cannot achieve the Olympic glory we deserve because Indian sport even with all its administrative and structural shortcomings, has been on the upswing, albeit very gradually given the challenges. This is however the case with every aspect of life in the world's largest democracy, which is probably also the most complex and diverse.

Badminton and Golf are today probably India's top performing Olympic sport globally. Both have been very consistent in doling out quality international performances year after year for at least the past two decades. And both have been raising the bar for themselves with every passing year as well, which is even more gratifying to the fan. This year, apart from Sindhu's Rio Silver, at least six international titles have been won in Badminton. This includes Sindhu's brilliant win at the prestigious China Open recently. Four international titles have also been won by the men golfers in places like Korea, The Philippines and Indonesia apart from India. Anirban Lahiri also finds himself in the top-20 money list of the coveted PGA tour. And after making it to the Olympics, the World Cup of Golf beckons now, scheduled to begin in Melbourne in the next 24 hours. Aditi Ashok has also been scorching the golfing greens and recently became the first Indian woman to win on the Ladies European Tour.

It is no wonder then that Siril Verma is the junior world number one in Badminton and Shubham Jaglan won the Junior World Golf Championships last year. In fact India's performances at the junior levels have been pleasing to say the least. Neeraj Chopra's world record javelin effort to catapult him to being India's first ever world champion at any level in athletics is awe-inspiring. Especially the distance he gained with his throw at such a young age. The junior shooters have been consistently winning Gold at Olympic events at the Junior Shooting World Cups and India's hockey juniors have also been winning abroad pretty consistently. Yes, Shooting and Hockey are probably the next two best performing Olympic sports of India at this point.

India's Olympic sport fans will continue to hope that Boxing, Wrestling and Weightlifting, the three other disciplines in which India had displayed considerable potential in, before treading on the path of self-destruction, resurrect themselves. With the appointment of a successful modern-era entrepreneur as the head of the national Boxing federation, better days can certainly be hoped for in the sport. Dipa Karmakar's Produnova became a rage during Rio and her astounding fourth-place showing at the Games also raises the hopes of a Gymnastics revolution in the country. Tennis, another medal near-miss at the Rio games for India, has always had the required lineage, tradition and infrastructure to throw up top quality players.

The Government therefore, will do well to identify these 9-10 disciplines for special investments and focus. They have some sort of good thing going about them in the country and if only the powers that be ensure that the enabling and supporting measures needed are in place, along with strict monitoring and discipline, results are bound to be very rewarding. The quest for glory at Tokyo 2020 needs to begin NOW!

When the National Open Trophy Returned to the Mecca of Indian Golf after 17 Years

With a beaming S.S.P. Chawrasia after his Hero Indian Open victory at the Delhi Golf Club

March 20, 2016

Not many remember Sk Jamshed Ali, one of India's earliest Arjuna awardees for the sport of Golf. It seems many credible sources of public information also do not have his name in the 'list'. Jamshed, India's first caddy-turned pro Golfer, won the coveted award way back in 1978. He honed his skills at the legendary Royal Calcutta Golf Club (RCGC), the world's second oldest golf course after the famous St. Andrews of Scotland. The legend of Jamshed Ali, still lives on at the famous 'caddy-basti' adjoining the wall of the 187 year old RCGC, the melting pot of so many of India's finest golfers.

S.S.P. Chawrasia's 2016 Hero Indian Open victory, in that context, should be celebrated for the continuation and progress of a healthy and passionate culture surrounding a sport, in a cricket mad country like India, while at the same time contributing immensely to quality and sustainable social upliftment. The Golfing culture of RCGC and the contribution it has made to the growth of the game in the country easily qualifies it as the 'Mecca of Golf' in the country. Even the legendary 'Biloo' Sethi became the first Indian to win the Indian Open at this hallowed course. Such is its sense of being associated with history.

S.S.P becomes the third 'home' golfer to win the National Open after Feroze Ali in 1993 and Arjun Atwal in 1999. RCGC would not have had to wait for 17 years if S.S.P had won it in any of his subsequent three runner-up finishes, after finishing second at the Open for the first time to Atwal in 1999. So en grained with 'Bengali Pride and Passion' is the otherwise cosmopolitan nature of the Club, that joke has it that they the faithful would also appropriate both Anirban Lahiri, a Bangalore bred golfer and Bangladesh's top Golfer Siddikur Rahman, both winners of the Indian Open, as one of their own given their 'bong' connections, without as much of a bat of the eyelid.

S.S.P carries on a glorious tradition which surprisingly is still very healthy, given growth of Golf is said to have a direct correlation to economic growth of a city/region/country and Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now called, has not been in the news of good economic reasons for some time now. Apart from Arjun Atwal, who is still winning tournaments on the global tours as recently as last year, Rahil Gangjee and Shankar Das have also returned many encouraging results, more so Rahil. And if you ask the present RCGC pros they will tell you that they themselves are training many dreamy-eyed and talented youngsters at the Club to ensure a healthy pipeline of talented Golfers who can win laurels for the country.

S.S.P is easily the leading beacon at present for the club, notching up his 3rd European Tour victory to be one win short of Jeev Milkha Singh's Indian record of four, and one better than even the present world number 52 Anirban Lahiri's two. That makes it six European Tour victories for the Club now, if you were to add Atwal's three. The only PGA Tour win for India, being Atwal's, also adds to RCGC's glories. As do the innumerable Asian Tour and domestic Indian titles. Is there one single Golf Club in the country with so many incredibly credible numbers associated with it?And chances are that with S.S.P set to be one of the top two Indian Golfers to represent the country at the Rio 2016 Olympics, RCGC will soon have an Olympian amongst them.

The glorious tradition of Golfing success for the Club set by the likes of Jamshed Ali, Basad Ali (a 10 time Indian order of merit winner), Rafaq Ali, Feroze Ali and Arjun Atwal are hail and hearty and in able hands which is great for the sport in the country. You need passionate cultures for a sport to grow around it. In fact, such is the depth and diversity of talent at the RCGC, that even the present order of merit leader in women's professional golf in the country, Neha Tripathi is a RCGC prodigy, a past winner of the WGAI tour and is one of India's top woman pro-golfers of the country for the past 6-7 years. S.S.P himself is training his nephews to become golfers. So here's a 'Long Live' to one of India's greatest Golfing nurseries and wishing it many more golden years of Golfing success.  

Results in Sports a Direct Outcome of Priorities

  Kavita Raut became the fourth Indian lady to qualify for Rio 2016 in the Marathon!

An Olympic Year pushes you to write more. The buzz among the global sporting fraternity is so palpable! There is so much happening all around in the build-up- athletes are qualifying, getting banned, injured et. all. And you sometimes want to just let go and dive headlong into capturing all those moments, those 'stars in the making' and all those stories of extreme human ambition, dejection and perseverance against all odds.

News just came in that an Indian runner Kavita Raut has qualified for the Rio Olympics making her the fourth Indian woman to do so. She beat the qualifying mark by more than two secs....but the marathon has maximum participation among all Games events and qualifying standards are therefore kept pretty lenient. In another unrelated development New Zealand's World#1 Ranked Woman Golfer Lydia Ko has said that the Olympics will be her top priority this year. Reinforces the stature of the Games even among hard-core individual professional sportsmen and women.

Back home Indian athletes including Olympic hopefuls are busy grinding it out at the South Asian Games. The twelfth edition being played in the cities of Guwahati and Shillong. People in the know and well-wishers of Olympic sports in the country, including several high ranking federation officials associated with sports for a long time, have raised concerns around this disrupting preparation schedules in an Olympic year. In fact, causing more harm to them as sparring with well below par competition has its ill-effects....or so they say.

But we have taken an oath to be positive haven't we? And the way to look at it, is that it might just instill more confidence, get them into a winning habit and so on. Time will tell. However, what agonizes the sports fan no-end is why cannot the authorities be more pragmatic in an Olympic year? Would the results have been anymore different if the top Olympic hopefuls were allowed to give the event a miss? What makes a Sports Minister energize all his efforts into himself organizing and pulling no stops to ensure that a nondescript regional sporting event gets more attention than Olympic preparations? Can you imagine a Sports Minister of a country missing from the country's sporting base for months on end, with less than a year to go for the Olympics to begin?

Results are often a direct outcome of priorities. Lydia Ko's priorities are crystal clear. You will see that her results will follow as well- GK's Call!

We can only hope that ours are in the right place as well.