India at Paris 2024 - What to look forward to on Day 1 27-July-2024

 Even though today is the official start of the competitions, Indians have started competing since day before yesterday. Archery ranking round was held and Indians - Men's, Women's and Mixed teams are directly through to the Quarters. 

Today all events starts at noon India time. 

Shooting - 

We have 10m Air Rifle Mixed team event. We have two teams competing. There are a total of 29 teams and we have Elavenil and Sandeep Singh Ramita and Arjun competing. Elavenil and Sandeep should have a good chance of progressing to the finals. Which is at 2 pm India time. 

Followed by 10m Air Pistol Men's Qualification at 2pm - Arjun Cheema and Sarabjot Singh

Followed by 10m Air Pistol Women's Qualification at 4pm - Manu Bhakar and Rhythm Sangwan

I am expecting at least 2 finalist from the three event.  

Rowing - Balraj Panwar will be competing in the Single sculls heats. Top 3 from each heat will move to quarters. And he didn't as he finished 4th

Boxing - We have Preethi Panwar in the 54kg round of 32 at 12:02 am against Vietnam's Vo Thi Kim Anh. 

Hockey - Men's grounp stage match against New Zealand at 9pm. Need to have a winning start

Table Tennis - Harmeet Desai against Jordan's Zaid Abo Yaman at 7:15 pm

Tennis - Men's Double first round Bopanna and Balaji Sriram vs Edouard Roger & Vasselin of France at 3:30 pm 

Badminton - Lakshya Sen vs Kevin Cordon of Guatamela at 7:10 pm Group stage

Satwik & Chirag vs Lucas Corvee & Ronan Labar at 8pm Men's doubles Group stage

Tanisha & Ashwini vs Kim So Yeong & Kong Hee Yong of Korea at 11:50pm - Women's doubles Group stage

Outside of Indian participation looking forward to some great competition in the Swimming pool..  

 

India at Tokyo 2020 - Review of my Medal predictions and our overall performance

Athletics - Neeraj was expected to win a medal but he surprised us with a Gold. The poor form our Johannes Vetter(who has a PB of 97m) in the finals and Keshorn Walcott (London Gold and Rio Bronze medalist) and Marcin Krukowski not qualifying for the finals helped a lot (both of them can throw well beyond Neeraj). 1 Medal expected 1 medal won 

Archery 

Deepika continued to perform poorly at the Olympics. Expected Deepika and the mixed team to win medals which they didn't. When Atanu defeated the Olympic Gold medalist Korean archer in round of 32 thought he can get to semis at least but he lost in the pre-quarters itself. 2 Medals expected 0 won

Badminton - I didn't expect Sindhu to win a medal as she was in poor form going into the Olympics. She performed well in pre-quarters and quarters to get to semis and also in the bronze medal match. No medal expected 1 medal won

Boxing - Amit and Vikas were the biggest disappointments of the Olympics boxing team. Both lost in the first round. 2 Medals expected 1 medal won

Equestrian - Fouaad did well to get to finals. 0 Medals expected 0 medal won 

Fencing - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Field Hockey - The men's team lost just 2 matches to the eventual finalist Belgium and Australia. Women's team after losing 3 in a row came back strong to finish 4th overall. 1 Medals expected 1 medal won

Golf - Aditi played beautifully to finish 4th. 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

 

Gymnastics - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Judo - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Rowing - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Sailing - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Shooting - As a team the Shooting contingent was the biggest disappointment. Saurabh shot well in qualification in both his events, other than that nothing to write about. 5 Medals expected 0 medal won

Swimming - Expected Sajan to make it to the semis but he didn't do his PB. 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Table Tennis - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Tennis - 0 Medals expected 0 medal won

Weighlifting - Mirabhai was expected to win silver which she did. 1 Medals expected 1 medal won

Wrestling Expected Bajrang and Vinesh to win medal and felt Ravi and Deepak will have outside chance of medal. Deepak lost in the bronze medal match and Bajrang and Ravi won medals  2 Medals expected 2 medal won

Excellent

1) Obviously the medal winners - Neeraj Chopra, Ravi Kumar, Mirabhai Chanu, Sindhu, Indian men's hockey team, Bajrang Punia, Lovlina Borgohain 
2) Aditi Ashok finishing 4th in Golf
3) Avinash Sable - Creating a National record in Steeplechase
4) Men's 4*400 Relay team - Creating an Asian Record in heats 
5) Women's Hockey team losing in semis 

6) Kamalpreet Kaur finishing 6th in the finals 

Good

1) Rowers finishing 11th Overall - Arvind and Arjun
2) Chirag and Satwik in Men's doubles winning 2 matches but couldn't qualify for the knock outs 
3) Sharath Kamal (he stretched Ma Long in the 3rd round) and Manika getting till 3rd round in TT
4) Fouaad Mirza getting to the finals and finishing 23rd overall

5) Sailing - Vishnu Saravanan Finished 20th overall

Average

1) Priyanka Goswami finishing 17th in women's 20km race walk 
2) Pooja Rani and Satish Kumar in boxing getting till quarter finals 
3) Sandeep Kumar finishing 23rd in men's 20km race walk 

4) Bhavani Devi winning one match in Fencing
5) Sailing - Nethra Kumanan finished 35th, Ganapathy and Varun finishing 17th overall

Bad

1) Athletes except Neeraj, Avinash and Men's relay team - MP Jabir, Mixed relay team, Walkers - Irfan, Rahul, Gurpreet and Bhavna, Dutee Chand, Shivpal Singh and Annu Rani in javelin, Seema Punia in Discus, M Sreeshankar in Long jump, Tajinder Pal Toor in shot put. Everyone of them didn't do their season's best also, leave alone personal best. When AFI were contemplating not sending Bhavna Jat, Irfan KT and Sreeshankar for the Olympics I was feeling bad for them, but looking at their performance maybe feel that AFI should have held them back. 
2) Vinesh Phogat - Didn't get going at all 
3) Amit Panghal - It was horrible to see him running away from his opponent 
4) Vikas Kishan  - With his experience losing in the first round itself that too to a Japanese boxer
5) Archers - Deepika Kumari, Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai and Pravin Jadhav

6) Sai Praneeth - Had a easy draw for group stage but lost both his matches

7) Shooters - All of them 

8) Swimming - Both Sajan and Srihari didn't do their PB which they achieved only few weeks ago

9) The other 3 golfers - Anirban, Udayan and Diksha

Sport	Medals Expected	Best case scenario	Actual Medals
Athletics	1	1	1
Archery	2	2	0
Boxing	2	5	1
Badminton	0	0	1
Equestrian	0	0	0
Fencing	0	0	0
Field Hockey	1	1	1
Golf	0	0	0
Gymnastics	0	0	0
Judo	0	0	0
Rowing	0	0	0
Sailing	0	0	0
Shooting	5	10	0
Swimming	0	0	0
Table Tennis	0	0	0
Tennis	0	0	0
Weightlifting	1	1	1
Wrestling	2	4	2
Total	14	24	7

India at Tokyo 2020 - what to look forward on Day 16 - 7th August 2021

Last day of action for Indians

Athletics - 

4:30 pm Men's Javelin throw finals at 4:30 pm. Neeraj Chopra will be in action

Golf

3 am - Aditi Ashok and Diksha will be in action on day 4. In case of rain tomorrow and there is no play Aditi will get silver. She is still 2 points ahead of 3rd placed group.. Let's hope she finishes strong. 

Wrestling - 

Around 4pm Bajrang Punia will be in the bronze medal match. He will face the winner between Senegal's Adama Diatta and Daulet Niyazbekov of Kazakhstan. Bajrang lost to the Kazakh wrestler in world championships and defeated to him 2 months ago.  

Medal possibilities - Bajrang Punia, Aditi Ashok and Neeraj Chopra

India at Tokyo 2020 - Our performance Today - Day 15 - 6th Aug 2021

 

Athletics -

50KM Race Walk men - Gurpreet Singh didn't finish the race. He was at 51st at 35KM mark and after that dropped off. 

20KM Race Walk Women - Priyanka Goswami was in the lead group for till about 12km mark but started dropping off and finished 17th. Bhavana Jat started dropping off from the leaders right from the get go, she finished 32nd overall. 

Men's 4*400 relay - Muhammed Anas, Nirmal Tom, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob ran for us. The new guys in the team Nirmal and Amoj ran beautifully. Anas had a decent start and Nirmal pushed us to the 6th spot and Arokia Rajiv handed over the baton to Amoj in the 5th spot and Amoj finished strong to get to 4th spot with an Asian Record of 3:00.25. This was not good enough as the previous heat was faster and they 2 fastest finishers where from that heat.. Good way to finish the day

Golf - 

Aditi Ashok shot a 3 under today to finish 12 under overall. She is 3 shots below the leader and 2 shots ahead of the 3rd place group. Diksha is at tied 51st with a 1 over today and 7 over overall. 

Hockey - 

Indian women lost to Great Britain in the Bronze Medal match 4-3. First quarter GB had more chances but India defended well to keep the score 0-0 in the first quarter. In the second quarter GB went up 2-0 and before India came back through to equalize 2-2 through couple of penalty corner conversions with Gurjit launching her drag flicks. Then India went up 3-2 through a field goal of Vandana. India went with the lead 3-2 at half time. The third quarter was evenly poised before GB equalized 3-3. India had an yellow and green card back to back to play about half of the 4th quarter a woman down and GB utilized to pressure us to get a PC. They converted the shot corner to go 4-3 up and India was not able to equalize and lost the match 3-4. It was a very good match and the Indian women exceeded all expectations to get this far. Hope we are able to build up on this performance and reach greater heights. 

Wrestling - 

Bajrang Punia defeated Kyrgyzstan's Ernazar Akmataliev 3-3 (since he got a 2 pointer while the opponent got all of his points in 1s). In the Quarters he took on Iran's Morteza Cheka Ghiasi which he won by fall. In the Semis Bajrang took on 3 time world champion Haji Aliev of Azerbaijan and he lost by points 5-12. He was behind from the get go and couldn't score much against Haji Aliev. He will play for bronze tomorrow.  

Seema Bisla lost to Tunisia's Sarra Hamdi 1-3. As the Tunisian lost in the next round Seema didn't get the Repachage chance. 

India at Tokyo 2020 - what to look forward on Day 15 - 6th August 2021

 

Athletics - 

50km walking - 2 am - Gurpreet Singh will be in action

Women's 20km walking - 1pm - Priyanka Goswami and Bhavana Jat will be in action

Men's 4*400 relay 2nd Heat at 5:07 pm

Golf - 

4am - Aditi Ashok and Diksha will be in action on day 3

Hockey - 

7 am - Indian women will take on Great Britain for the Bronze Medal match

Wrestling - 

8 am - Bajrang Punia will be in action in pre-quarters against Kyrgyzstan's Ernazar Akmataliev. Quarters will happen immediately after the pre-quarters and semis at 2:45 pm

8 am - Seema Bisla will be in action in pre-quarters against Tunisia's Sarra Hamdi. Quarters will happen immediately after the pre-quarters and semis at 2:45 pm

Medal possibilities - Bajrang Punia, Indian women in Hockey

India at Tokyo 2020 - Our performance Today - Day 14 - 5th Aug 2021

 

Athletics 

Sandeep started well and was 2nd till about 6km before dropping out. Rahul was in the middle and Irfan was almost last from the beginning. Sandeep started dropping back from 6km mark and to finish 23rd more than 4 minutes behind the winner with a time of 1:25:07. Rahul Rohila and Irfan were both lapped twice in the 1km loop (eventually they were more than 2km behind the leaders) . Rahul finished 47th with a timing of 1:32:06 and Irfan finished 51st with a timing of 1:34:41. Irfan was not in good form and there was thought to drop him from Olympics and was sent only on assurance of the coach that his performance will improve. It was really sad to see his performance today.  

Golf - 

Aditi continued her good form with a 5 under par today and an overall 9 under. She is tied for 2nd spot with three others. They are all behind the leader by 4 shots. 

Hockey - 

The 41 year wait for the Olympic medal ended today. India went down 0-1 in the first 2 minutes itself. The first quarter had quite a few penalty corners for Germany which we saved to finish the first quarter 0-1. India started pretty well in the second quarter to equalize 1-1 through Simranjeet's beautiful goal. The 24th to 30th minute of the match was the best part where Germany scored twice through field goals to go 3-1 up before India equalized through 2 penalty corner conversions to 3-3 at half time. Third quarter started well for India and we got a Penalty stroke for a push in the D and Rupinder converted and within minutes we went up 5-3 through Simranjeet's goal. That's how the 3rd quarter ended. In the fourth quarter Germany scored a goal through penalty corner conversion to make it 5-4 in favour of India. India gave away way too many penalty corners even one with just 6 seconds left. Thankfully Germany was poor in their penalty conversion and our defence and Sreejesh were lock solid. Germany had a total of 13 penalty corners and converted only 1 today.  

Wrestling -

Anshu lost to Russia's Valeria Koblova 5-1 in the first Repachage round and didn't qualify for the Bronze medal match.  

Vinesh Phogat defeated Sweden's Sofia Mattsson in the pre-quarters 7-1. In the quarter finals she faced Belarus's Vanesa Kaladzzinskaya through a pin. It was a disappointing result as Vinesh was completely outclassed by the Belarusian. 

Ravi Kumar lost to Russia's Zavur Uguev (former world champion) 7-4. It was 2-4 in favor of the Russian end of the first 3 minutes and Ravi tried his best but the Russian defended pretty well in the second half to win the match 7-4. Ravi had to settle for the silver. 

Deepak Punia lost to San Marino's Myles Nazem Amine in the bronze medal match. Deepak was leading till the last few seconds but lost out with a take down.