India at Rio - 12th August Summary

Golf : The poor performance continued on day 2. Chawrasia had a par score yesterday and Anirban had a 2 over. I think we can forget about any medals from Golf (not that I was personally expecting). 

Badminton : Both the doubles team lost their matches as expected. Manu and Sumeeth still have a chance of advancing to the next round but Jwala and Ashwini are out of contention. 

Archery : Atanu Das played beautifully yesterday also but the Korean played even better. He lost out in the pre-quarters. 

Shooting : Gagan Narang continued the so year yet so far in the 50m rifle prone event. He was in the 4 position till the last series and then lost out to finish 13th. Chain Singh finished 36th in the same event. Gurpreet Singh is placed 10th at the end of day 1 in the Rapid Fire event. It continues today. Mairaj Ahmed is also placed 10th at the end of day 1 in the skeet event. He had a very good second series and had a full score of 25. Hope both shoot well today. 

Rowing : Dattu Bhokanlal finished second in the low ranking round and will fight for 13-18 positions now. 

Hockey : Canadian Goalkeeper David Carter was way good yesterday to ensure the match ended in draw. Their defence also was too good. Our problem of giving too many fouls and getting cards continued in this match also. We finished with a draw. We also gave away quite a few penalty corners unlike the match against Germany where we hardly gave any PCs. We had already qualified for the quarters this match was to decide whether we finished 3rd or 4th and with the draw we finished 4th. We will be up against Belgium which finished 1st in the other group. 

Tennis : Positive result with Sania and Bopanna defeating Andy Murray and Heather Watson. 

Boxing : Vikas Krishan as expected did very well to win convincingly against the Turkish Boxer. He is up against Uzbek boxer in the next round, who was brutal in the pre-quarters yesterday against a Australian Boxer. Vikas will find it very difficult in quarters. As everyone says to win a olympic medal you got to beat the best, lets hope Vikas does that. 

Athletics : Sorry to have missed out to the 100 m heats in the to watch list yesterday. We had Dutee Chand in the heat and she finished 7th. 

Vikas Gowda : I was expecting him to get to the finals, but the fact that he was out with injury for most of the season showed in the series of throws he had. He didn't even cross 58M and finished a low 28th. 

Manpreet Kaur : As expected she also didn't make it beyond the qualifiers. She finished 23rd. 

Jinson Johnson : This was a very good run from Jinson to finish 5th in his heat which also had the champion Rudisha in the mix. His time was 25th in the field of 58th and in some of the heats the first place was itself slower than his time. Really good job by Jinson

Long Jump : Ankit Sharma started with two fouls and his third jump was only 7.67 and he finished 23rd and didn't get qualified for the finals

400m : Muhammed Anas finished 6th in his heat and overall his time was 31st

20KM Walking : Gurmeet was supposed to be the strongest of the three but within 1km of the start he was struggling and was DQed within 2km and Ganapathi also was DQed withi 4km. Manish Singh did exceedingly well to finish a credible 13th. He was in the top 10 till 10km and then dropped to 18th and that's where he was end of 18km but he increased his pace to finish 13th. Good Job by Manish Singh. 

Outside of India's performances - Two things stood out

1) Anthony Erwin - 2000 Olympic gold medal winner and got into drugs, attempted suicide. He came back at the age of 35 to win the fastest swimming event. 
2) Joseph Schooling the 21 year old from Singapre beat the superstars Michael Phelps, Chad Le Clos and Lasloh Cseh and good thing was all of them finished together second :)

India at Rio - What to look forward today - August 12th

Today is the first day of Athletics and we have a pretty large contingent. 

Golf : Round 2 continues in the men's event. Anirban Lahiri and SS Chawrasia are in the fray. They have to really up their game to get any chance of medals. Chawrasia has a par score end of day 1 and Anirban is 3 over. Starts at 4pm IST

Badminton : Jwala and Ashwini will have their match against the 11th Ranked Dutch pair. Sumeeth and Manu are against the 4th ranked Chinese team. Both teams will find it tough to win their respective matches against the much higher ranked teams. The next set of singles matches are only on Sunday. Womens at 5:30pm IST and mens at 7:50pm IST

Archery : Atanu Das was phenomenal in the ranking round and preliminary rounds. He is up against the Korean world # 8 Lee Seungyun. Let's hope he shoots as well as the earlier rounds. Starts at 5:43PM IST

Shooting: There are three events in which Indians are in fray. First up is 50m prone (lying on the ground shooting) and we have Gagan Narang and Chain Singh in this event. Qualifiers and finals will both be held today for this event. Men's skeet we have our first Indian to qualify for this event - Mairaj Ahmed Khan. He is currently 10th in the world rankings. This event is held over 2 days and today is the first round of qualifiers. Next is the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol event where we have Gurpreet Singh who is currently ranked 19th in the world. This is the event where we got our Silver in London with Vijay Kumar. This event will be held over two days. After this there is only one more shooting event for the Indians 50m Rifle 3 position (on Sunday). 50m - 5:30pm IST, Skeet : 6PM IST and 25M RFP - 8:45PM IST 

Rowing : Dattu Bhokanlal will be in the lower placing rounds - he is already out of medal contention - 9:20PM IST

Hockey : Men's team take on Canada and Women's team take on Argentina. Men's team should win their match against Canada. 9PM IST 

Tennis : Sania and Bopanna take on Andy Murray and Heather Watson. They will be in medal contention if they win this match - 11:20 PM IST

Boxing : Vikas Krishan is up against Ondel Sipal of Turkey. He should ideally win this match and get into quarters - 3 AM IST

Athletics : 
Vikas Gowda is in Group B Discuss Throw in the qualifiers and he should ideally get into the finals. Starts at 7:25PM IST
Manpreet Kaur is in Group B of Shot Put in the qualifiers. Don't think she will qualify for the finals. Qualifiers starts at 6:35PM IST
Jinson Johnson is in the heat 3 of Mens 800M. It will be very difficult for him to go beyond the heats - His event is at 6:56PM IST
Ganapathi Krishnan of Tamil Nadu, Gurmeet Singh and Manish Singh are in the 20KM Walk event. We had a surprise top 10 finish in London. This starts at 11PM IST
400m Mens - Muhammad Anas is in the Heat 7. Don't expect him to go beyond the heats. This starts at 6:25 am. 
Long Jum - Ankit Sharma is in Group B. Don't think he will get to the finals. This starts at 5:50 AM. 

India at Rio - August 11th Summary

Archery : Deepika Kumari and Bombayla Devi both lost in the pre-quarters. Both archers were shooting very well the previous day but yesterday was not their day. Deepika's opponent was also way too good. With this women's archery is over for India. 

Badminton: As expected the both doubles team lost their respective matches. They were against some top players, womens team faced the # 1 ranked team and men's the #2 team. Sindhu and Saina won their respective matches in straight sets. Srikanth also started off with a win in straight sets. 

Golf : Anirban Lahiri who was talked about as a medal prospect by the media had a low 3 over par and SS Chawrasia had a on par score end of day 1. The leader has a 8 under. Let's see how the Indians far in the coming days. 

Boxing : This was a huge disappointment for me. Shiva Thapa was against a very tough opponent in Ramirez and the Cuban was way too good for Shiva. Shiva was able to land few punches in every round but it was pretty one sided match up. 

Tennis : With Samantha Stosur in the opposition, I thought it would be a tough match for Sania/Bopanna pair. They however won the game in straight sets and are through to quarters. The one advantage of mixed doubles is that it is a field of only 16 teams. One more win will take them into medals contention (there is a bronze medal match up)

Hockey : Mens team lost to the Dutch 2-1. The stupid fouls by Raghu and Sunil was totally unnecessary and the team was down to 9 players for nearly 10 minutes. It was interesting final minutes when India got 5 penalty corners after the with few seconds left and we tried various options but nothing materialized. We are through to the quarters though. The womens team as expected lost to USA 3-0

India at Rio - What to look forward today - August 11

Golf starts today - Anirban Lahri and SS Chawrasia are in the fray.. Some people say Anirban has an outside chance for a medal.. Let us see.. Many of the top Golfers have dropped out because of the Zika scare.. I am not sure if Golf will continue in Olympics next time - what is the point of the top guys don't participate? 

Badminton also starts today - Initial round is all league phase only and not knock outs. We have women's double pair of Jwala and Ashwini, men's double pair of Sumeeth Reddy and Manu Attri, Womens Singles Sindhu and Saina, Mens singles Srikanth all of them will be on show today. Expectation is that the singles players should win their respective matches and doubles will be tough

Boxing my favorite boxer after Akhil Kumar starts today - Shiva Thapa. Shiva was the youngest boxer to represent India at London when he was 18 and that inexperience showed up in his first round loss. Now he is 22 but his opponent today is the Cuban Ramirez who was a Gold Medal winner at London. Generally Cubans are too good in boxing. Let us hope Shiva gets going this time.  

Tennis yesterday's mixed doubles match got pushed to today. Sania and Bopanna take on Samantha Stosur and John Peers. I think it will be a tough match for the Indian pair.. Let us see 

Hockey : We have the men take on the Dutch and the women USA. Men have been playing beautiful hockey and let us hope they come out winning against the Dutch (no last minute goals please). USA is playing very well and I hope we don't lose badly again. 

Archery : Can Bombayla and Deepika go all the way today? If they win the next two matches they both will face each other in semis. Bombayla starts the day against Mexican Valencia (world # 18) and Deepika starts against Tan Ya Ting (world #2). Rankings don't count and it is all about what each of them do in the given day. 

Let us see how the day goes. 

India at Rio - Aug 10th Summary

We had some good results yesterday and some expected bad results and also shocking results..

Good

Manoj Kumar won his first round and through to the round of 16 - Excellent result considering that his opponent was the bronze medalist at London

Deepika Kumari and Bombayla Devi also had excellent results and are through to Round of 16

Average

Sathish Kumar as expected finished 9th in the field of 14.. The gold medal winner lifted 50KG over what Sathish lifted.. But he went beyond his commonwealth gold medal lift which was good

Disppointments

Jitu Rai - Huge disappointment.. He was our best medal hope and I was hoping that he will win 2 medals and he had few very poor shots to miss out of the finals. Prakash Nanjappa also lost out

Hockey - India was thrashed by Australia in womens hockey. we lost 1-6

Avtar Singh - Lost in the first round in Judo

Tennis got rescheduled to today

India's chances at Rio

Rio Olympics begins this week and We have 119 athletes participating in the RIO Olympics. The largest contingents that we have ever sent to Olympics. It is good that we are able to send such a large contingent and I am sure the more we participate the more the chances we get in terms of winning medals at the Games. 

The recent Narsingh Yadav doping controversy and the earlier case between him and Sushil will definitely impact the wrestling contingent. 

Here is the breakdown of the 119 

Archery - we have the 3 member women's team and Atanu Das in men's
Athletics - we have 18 men and 17 women
Badminton - Men 3 and women 4
Boxing 3 Men
Golf - 2 Men and 1 woman
Gymnastics - 1 woman
Judo - 1 man
Rowing - 1 man
Shooting - 9 men and 3 women
Swimming - 1 man and 1 woman
Weightlifting - 1 man and 1 woman
Table Tennis - 2 men and 2 women
Wrestling - 5 men and 3 women
Tennis - 2 men and 2 women
Hockey - 16 men and 16 women

Let us look at each individual sport and what chances we will have

Hockey Team - The men's team did finish second in the champions Trophy recently but after that they did nothing great in the 4 nation's trophy and the test against Spain which were held after that. We have Germany, Netherlands in our group. We should get into the Quarters and from there on its how we play on the given day. Let's hope we make it to the semis. Women's team has qualified for the first time, let's hope they enjoy the stay at the Games. In case they make it till the quarters that should be a good achievement. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Tennis - There is the Men's doubles, Women's doubles and Mixed Doubles. Mixed doubles team of Sania and Rohan might get a chance but I am not betting on it. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Swimming - We are there because of the quota that the country gets to send to send 2 athletes. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Table Tennis - Sharat Kamal, Soumyajit Ghose in men's and Mouma Das, Manik Batra in women's singles event will find it very tough against the other Asian players. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Judo - Avtar Singh is the lone athlete in Judo. He is not a top ranked athlete in his weight category. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Golf - Anirban Lahiri is being talked about highly as a possible medal hope, I am not so sure. Maybe he will have an outside chance as most of the top golfers pulled out due to the Zika Virus. There are Aditi Ashok and Shivsankar Chawrasia who have also qualified. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Athletics - We have 35 athletes (excluding the banned shot putter) who have qualified for the games. This is a pretty large contingent but are we going to get our first Track and Field medal at Rio? Sadly the answer will be a NO. 

However, there can be a few who can go beyond the initial rounds (mind you not win medals)

Women's 4x400 Relay team - I will be very happy if they make it to the finals 
Women Steeplechase - Lalita Babar and Sudha Singh
Dutee Chand (women's 100m) - I really want her to make it to the semis for all the troubles she had to go through 
Men's discuss - Vikas Gowda. He is definitely a top 10 ranked discuss thrower but definitely not a top 3 who can win you a medal
Women's discuss - Seema Punia might make the finals
Marathon, Walking - I will be very happy if Indians finish in the top 20. Last time at London, KT Irfan finished 10th in 20km walk. 
Then there is this guy Renjith Maheswary - I had him in my outside chance list for London but he fouled out. He has the third best jump in the world this year but I don't expect anything from him. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Rowing - We have one athlete, Bhokanlal Dattu, in rowing. We have never won medals at Asian level itself, so don't expect anything. 

Expectations of medals - 0

Badminton - Saina will face Li Xuerui in quarters and that's where her games will end. Sindhu will face Tai Tsu Yin in the pre-quarters and it will be tough for her to go beyond that and if she does she will face Yihan Wang in quarters. Jwala and Ashwini will find it difficult to go beyond the group stage. Srikanth Kidambi will face Lin Dan if he gets to the quarters and he will not go beyond that for sure. Manu Atthri and Sumeet Reddy will also find it difficult to go beyond the group stage

Expectations of medals - 0

Effectively 89 of the 119 athletes do not have any chance of winning medals. Does that mean the other 30 have chances of medals? - not really. It is just that we have chances in the sports that the 30 athletes participate in - Archery, Boxing, Wrestling, Shooting, Gymnastics and weightlifting we have chances of winning medals. Let us look at each of them. 

Archery - From the time of Limba Ram we had some leading archers get to Olympics but get nervous at the Games. Last time we had Deepika who was the world # 1 going into the games but she didn't get anywhere. Let us hope that it doesn't happen this time also. We should at least get 1 medal from Archery if not 2. 

Boxing - Shiva Thapa, Vikas Krishan and Manoj Kumar all have realistic chances of winning a medal. Actually they were in my list for 2012 also. Hope they do well. I expect at least 1 medal in Boxing from Shiva Thapa. 

Wrestling - Yogeshwar, the Phogat Sisters (or cousins) Vinesh and Babita should have a good chance of making it good. Narsingh could have done well if not for the doping scandal. We have generally been doing well in the freestyle with not much success in Greco Roman, I believe that will continue in this Olympics also. Expect at least 2 medals one each in men's and women's section. 

Gymnastics - Dipa has an outside chance of winning a medal if she does well in the Vault. That's her main event. 

Weightlifting - The Commonwealth Gold medalist Satish Kumar and Mira Bhai Chanu in women's might have an outside chance of winning a medal. I will be happy if we get a medal in weightlifting. 

That leaves us with the sport where we have been doing well (against India's standards) since 2004 Olympics - Shooting. It all depends on the day but we have a pretty large contingent and the following people should realistically win us a medel

Jitu Rai - The Golden man. He should come back with 2 medals in both 50m and 10m pistol events. 

Gagan Narang or Bhindra should win a medal in 10m rifle event

Apurvi(10m rifle), Ayonika Paul(10m rifle) and Heena Sidhu(10m pistol) can win a medal in their day. 

Manavjit Singh Sandhu might have an outside chance in Trap event. 

Expectations of medals - 3 (best case - 6) 

Total Medal that I expect - is minimum 8 and max 15. I definitely hope this will be our best Olympics in terms of medals crossing the 6 we had in London.

I will be very Happy if the following happens

1) We cross double digit in terms of medals

2) Win a medal in men's hockey 

First may happen second very difficult. Let's see how much of my predictions come true when the Games ends on 22nd August. 

To All my Nationalist Friends

This post is dedicated to all my nationalist friends (or the so called BJP supporters). 

What exactly happened is that few people shouted slogans supporting Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat (that they were martyrs, they were wrongly killed, etc.) and that Kashmir has a right to self determination. 

Afzal Guru - even though he was hanged on circumstantial evidence, I trust the decision of the SC. 

The main anti-national slogans were 

“Bharat ki barbaadi tak, jung rahegi, jung rahegi!”

“India, Go Back” 

These were made by Kashmiri students - But aren't these things that are heard in Kashmir on a daily basis? Your ally in J&K says much worser things and are more aligned to separatists views. Didn't we as a nation agree in UN that we will allow self determination in the entire Kashmir (this includes what is occupied by Pakistan)? 

Scotland voted on whether they can be separated from Great Britain? - Should all those who voted yes be jailed for sedition? Catalunya also wants to separate from Spain - can we jail everyone for sedition? Oxford University union took a pledge that they will never fight for the King - even though they were termed as anti-nationals no one was booked on sedition. 

We as a nation are not ready to listen to these kind of statements made in public - we are not ready for such a democracy. 

We are however, ok with people saying things like this country is useless, this country is going down the drains, I cannot live here within our living rooms. I have many of my friends who live outside India (still Indian citizens) who have said worser things. Can we book all of them under sedition? 

The main issue to me is why was Kanhaiya Kumar, JNU students union president, arrested on charges including sedition? Did he shout slogans against India? It seems that police have learnt that he was no way connected to the slogan shouting, so would they tell the courts that he can be released? I hope some sense prevails. 

What is nationalism in letting someone getting arrested on sedition charges for no fault of his? When you can ally with a party which mostly aligns with the views of separatists what right does BJP has to give gyan on nationalism to everyone? 

Do we need a law on which "No One" has ever been convicted but it is most abused by all politicians? My simple answer is NO.