India at Rio - August 17th summary

Golf : Aditi Ashok is in a much better form than the men's golfers. She is currently tied 7th with a 3 under par score. 

Badminton : Heartbreak for Srikanth. He was nervous in the first game and lost it 6-21. He came back strong in the second game to win 21-11. The third game was close till around 17 points and then Lin Dan took a lead and never looked back to win the third game 21-18. The hopes of a medal in mens badminton ended with this loss. 

Athletics : Tintu Luka was in the fray in the 800m heats. She did what she does always, ran very fast in the first lap and then the wheels comes off. She finished 6th in the heat and 29th overall and failed to qualify for the semis. However she got a seasons best today which was good.

Wrestling : I was expecting Vinesh Phogat to win a medal today and she started very strong in the pre-quarters with a 11-0 victory. In the quarters she got injured badly and forfeited the match. She was sadly taken out on a stretcher. Hope she recovers soon. 

Sakshi Malik started her campaign with a 3-1 win in both her round of 32 and pre-quarters. In the quarters she lost a hard fought match to the Russian wrestler. Luckily the Russian went on to win her semis and get to the finals, which gave Sakshi a chance to compete in repechage rounds. She had to win 2 matches to win a bronze which she did. In both matches she was down but came back strongly in the nick of time to win the matches. In the last match she was down 0-5 but came back strong to win it 8-5.

Sakshi Malik won India's first medal in rio a bronze. This is also the first time an Indian women is winning a wrestling medal at the Olympics. Great job. 

India at Rio - What to look forward today - August 18th

Golf : Day 2 of the golf event - Aditi Ashok is currently in tied 7th position with a 3 under par score. Starts at 4pm IST

Badminton : Sindhu takes on Nozomi Okuhura of Japan, the world # 6. Let's hope she continues to carry her good form. A win will assure at least a Silver medal but a loss will take her to the bronze medal play off against Li Xuerui or Carolina Marin. Starts at 7:30pm IST.

Wrestling : Babita Kumari is in the womens 53kg. She is up against Maria Prevolaraki of Greece in the pre-quarters. Starts at 6:30pm IST. Hope she goes one better than Sakshi

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.