India at Rio - August 16th summary

We just two Indians in fray today - Hardeep Singh in 98kg greco roman wrestling and Sindhu in badminton quarter finals.

Hardeep lost his match against the Turkish opponent. With the turkish wrestler losing in the semis,  there was no chance in repechage.  

The big result of the day was Sindhu defeating world #2 Wang Yihan in the quarter finals in straight games to advance to the semis.  Wang had the lead for the most part of the first game but Sindhu came back to tie it around point 15 and then it was going back and forth. Sindhu won the first set 22-20. In the second set Sindhu took initial lead and held on to it for long. At a point she had a 5 point advantage 18-13. Wang came back to draw level but Sindhu held her nerve to win the second game 21-19. She will be up against the winner of the all Japanese quarter finals between Nozomi Okuhara (world #6) and Akane Yamaguchi (world #12)

India at Rio - what to look forward today - August 17th

Hope the wait ends today. 

Golf : Aditi Ashok starts her campaign in the womens golf tournament.  Today is day 1. Starts at 4pm ist

Badminton : Srikanth takes on multiple world and Olympic champion Lin Dan. Srikanth has defeated Lin Dan earlier,  so he should go into the match strongly believing he can do it again. Starts at 5.50pm ist

Wrestling : Sakshi Malik is in the womens freestyle 58kg category.  She starts against Sweden's Johanna Mattsson, a world championship silver medallist in the round of 32. Match starts 6.38pm ist
Vinesh Phogat is in the womens freestyle 48kg category.  She starts against Romania's Emila Alina Vuc in the pre-quarters.  Match starts at 7pm ist. 

Hope our women wrestlers win our first medal today. 

Athletics : Tintu Luka is in the womens 800m heat 3. PT Usha, her coach keeps saying Tintu is a sub 2 runner. Best she can expect is get past the heats and get to the semis. Her heats is at 7.39pm ist

India at Rio - What to look forward today - August 16th

This list is shrinking sadly and we still wait for our first medal :(

Badminton : PV Sindhu faces Wang Yihan in the quarter finals. Wang Yihan is currently ranked World # 2. Good thing is that Sindhu has defeated Wang a few times and desperately hope she does it again today. Match is at 3:25am IST

Wrestling: Hardeep Singh is in the Greco Roman 98KG category. He starts his campaign against Turkish wrestler Cenk Ildem who has 2 bronze medals in the world championships (2011 and 2014) and few Bronze medals from the European championships. Hardeep qualified with the Silver medal in the Asian Championship. He was the only greco roman wrestler to get a direct qualification, Ravi who played yesterday came in due to disqualification of another athlete. Lets hope for the best. The event starts from 6:30pm IST. 

That's it :(

India at Rio - What is left still?

With just 6 more days left in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics the Indian team is yet to open it's account in terms of medals. Things are looking very bleak at this moment and we might end up with a medal tally lesser than London. I hope we don't go to the levels of Beijing. 

Badminton - Sindhu and Srikanth are in the quarters and are playing beautifully. However, their quarterfinals opponents are going to be tough. 

Wrestling - We still have 7 members in wrestling who are still yet to start competing. This is the big medal hope for us. 

Athletics 
4*400 Relay for Men and Women - 12 Athletes (excluding 2 who have participated in 400m runs it is 10 who have not taken part so far)
Men's Marathon - 3 Athletes
Men's 50km Walk - 1 Athlete 
Womens 800m - 1 - Tintu Luka 
Womens 20KM Walk - 2 Athletes

Golf - The women's event has not started yet and we have Aditi Ashok in it. 

So out of the 118 who went to the games there are only 29 left in the fray. Biggest disappointment has been Shooting, Boxing and Archery. Badminton and Wrestling are the only medal hopes for us now. 

India at Rio - August 15th summary

Badminton - Had very good results in both men and women. Srikanth defeated Jano Jorgensen in straight games and Sindhu defeated Tai tzu ying in straight games. Lin Dan and Wang Yihan next up. 

Athletics : Renjith Maheswary did his usual at olympics. He finished 30th and failed to qualify for the finals. He had a jump of 17.3 only last month and that jump would have put him in first place :(
Srabani Nanda finished 6th in her heats in women's 200m. 
Lalita Babar the first finalists in the track in 32 years finished 10th in the 3000m steeplechase. Like the Asian games she did a slightly lower time than the heats. She could have finished 7th if she had the same heats time. 
Seema Punia also ended the poor run for the athletes and finished a low 20th and didn't qualify for the finals in the Discuss throw. 

Wrestling : Ravinder Khatri lost his first match and with the person defeating him losing in the semis he didn't get the second chance through repechage. 

Boxing : Vikas was mentioning that if he gets past the quarters he will come back with gold medal. That didn't happen as the Uzbek boxer was just too strong and defeated Vikas in a pretty one-sided event. With this we end up boxing also with no medals. 

There were 3 sports where we were expecting good haul of medals - boxing, shooting and wrestling. With us drawing a blank in boxing and shooting our only hope is wrestling now. 

India at Rio - what to look forward today - August 15th

Can India win its first medal on its independence day?  Going to be very difficult.  

Badminton : Srikanth faces 5th ranked Jan Jorgensen in the pre-quarters. Sindhu faces 8th ranked Tai tzu ying. It will be tough matches for both. Srikanth plays at 5.30pm ist and Sindhu at 2am IST. 

Athletics : Renjith maheswary is in the triple jump qualifiers.  He has been a huge disappointment at the Olympic stage all his career. He usually does something spectacular to qualify and then fades in the big stage. This time also he has qualified with the third best jump in the world this year. I hope he does well at the big stage to get to the finals. 

Then there is the ever smiling Srabani Nanda in womens 200m heat 5. She has a clear aim of getting a PB, hope she achieves that - no hope for progressing

Then we have the first finalist in 32 years in the tracks in Lalita Babar, who is in the finals of 3000m steeplechase. She smashed the national record in the heats, hope she betters that time today. Praying for a top 5 finish.  In asian games she got a PB in heats and in the finals didn't meet that time to settle for the Bronze,  hope she doesn't do that again. 

Seema Punia is in the discuss qualifiers group B. She has a chance of making it to the finals. 

Triple jump starts at 6pm IST

Womens 200m heat 5 - 6.24pm ist

Steeplechase 7.45pm ist

Discuss starts at 5am ist

Wrestling : With the shooting team coming empty handed it is wrestling that should give us some medals. Wrestling starts today. Ravinder KhatrI 85kg Greco roman. Greco roman has not been our strong area, lets see what Ravi does today.  Starts at 6.45pm IST

Boxing : Vikas Krishan the only boxer left in fray faces Bektemir Melikuziev in the quarter finals. Bektemir is very strong and defeated Vikas last year in the asian championship finals easily.  Win today wilk ensure a medal for Vikas but that is going to be very difficult.  At 3.15am ist

India at Rio - August 14th summary

Golf : Anirban and Chawrasia are in the bottom 10 of the competition

Badminton : I was not expecting medals but didn't expect Saina to get knocked out in group stage - there are reports that she had knee injury. She lost to 66th ranked Ukranian. Sindhu was shacky in the first game but won her match in 3 games. Srikanth won in straight games. Srikanth will face 5th ranked Jan Jorgensen and Sindhu 8th ranked Tai tzu ying. Going to be very difficult for both.

Shooting : Chain did very well in the prone position but not so well in the other 2 positions to finish 23rd. Gagan was average in all 3 positions to finish 29th. Th3 first time since 2004 our shooting team are returning without a medal.

Hockey : India was fully on defence as Belgium had more than 75% of the possession.  I was happy that we went 1-0 at half time.  However, once the equaliser came knew it was only a matter of time before Belgium go into the lead, which they did and won the match 3-1. Belgium are playing really well won't be surprised if they go all the way.

Athletics : OP Jaisha and Kavitha Raut finished 89th and 120th in the womens marathon.

Tennis : Sania and Bopanna lost in straight sets to the Czech pair and missed out on the medal.

Boxing : Knew it would be a tough match for Manoj Kumar but he tried his best. He lost to the Uzbek boxer. Vikas is the only one left.

Gymnastics : Who would have thought we will have a finalist in Gymastics.  In my morning post I had mentioned that I would be very happy if she finishes in top 5, but she went one better to finish 4th. Way to go girl. Dipa Karmakar you should be really proud of what you achieved.