Big Question – Will India win a medal in the Beijing Olympics?

Beijing Olympics already has its share of controversies before its start with Tibetans protests and human rights issues. Admist all that, every Indian would like to see if we can clear the medal draught of not only winning some medal but also doing fairly well in this Olympics. While many eminent sportsman are confident, however we do not see much cheer or news about India’s hunt for medal in the Olympics.

Its shame that news channels across India are still having special slots for Cricket and discussing Stupid irrelevant Test match between India and Sri Lanka and no one is bothered to show or encourage the team for the Olympics. Should IOA (Indian Olympic Association) be blamed? Many of us do not know what is the Olympic squad? One report says that 99 member’s squad is going to the Olympics, which has 42 officials. Do we need 42 officials to manage 57 playing members? I see that’s a waste of our hard earned tax money. Further, USA, China, Australia are sending members in the range of 500+ and even small countries like Estonia are sending a squad of 47+ and our country with more than 1.2 billion people are sending only 57 members.

And wait! Read this! Indian Hockey Team hasn’t qualified for the Olympics 2008? The Indian hockey team, which has brought 8 Gold medals and made us proud has FAILED TO QUALIFY? Who is to be blame? There were reports of selecting Hindus or just Sikhs or Muslims, however the bottom line is that its the BIGGEST Shame for us.

What has changed since 2004 Athens Olympics? We still lack world class stadiums, equipments and coach/assistance. What if we have marginally improved, does IOA (Indian Olympic Association) understand that world leaders like China and US have improved manifold times to ensure they maintain their leadership? Further with no media interest in exposing these problems, relevant association and Government Authorities are in no mood to look into the issues and produce Medal-Winning Team.

And finally, we, Indians are to blame as much. We are so much into CRICKET that we tend to overlook that Olympics is FAR MORE bigger event, which can bring a COUNTRY big pride. How can we forget the worst performance we had during World Cup Cricket? T20, is still very young and we cannot give much credit to Indian Team for winning that. But then what happened in Asia Cup and now in Sri Lanka. Like many occasions in the past this team will again loose badly in Sri Lanka, we will start abusing them for few weeks before their one win will change our opinion and again the Sponsors and attention will go towards them. Damn!, why am i discussing cricket here! I hate the fact more now how CRICKET has taken all our attention to focus on other games. I am sure the kind of attention cricket is getting here in India; if we give the same to other sports (including the remuneration and sponsors) we can do much better in other sports.

Anyways, my sincere wishes are for the entire squad. Hope you bring laurels to India and we promise to give each hero a welcome that will be far grander and talked about than for any sporting event. I request my readers to post their good wishes to the team for a great event and laurels to India! CHAK DE INDIA!!

The Team

Archery: Dola Banerjee, Pranitha Vardhineni, L Bombayala Devi, Mangal Singh Champia.

Athletics: Anju Bobby George (Long Jump), Krishna Poonia (Discus), Harwant Kaur (Discus), Preeja Sreedharan (10,000m), Manjit Kaur (400m), Chitra Soman (4×400m relay), Sini Jose (4×400m relay),MR Poovamma (4×400m relay), Mandeep Kaur (4×400m relay), S Geeta (4×400m relay), K Mridula (4×400m relay), J J Shobha (Heptathlon), Sushmita Singh Roy (Heptathlon), G G Pramila (Heptathlon),Vikas Gowda (Discus), Renjith Maheswary (Triple Jump), Surender Singh (10000m).

Badminton: Anup Sridhar, Saina Nehwal

Boxing: Jitender (51kg), Akhil Kumar (54kg), A L Lakhra (57kg), Vijender(75kg) and Dinesh Kumar (81kg)

Judo: Khumujam Tombi Devi, Divya. Rowing: Bajrang Lal Takhar (Single M1X), Devnder Khandwal and Manjeet Singh (Light Weight Double Scull).

Shooting: Manavjit Singh Sandhu (Clay Pigeon Trap), Mansher Singh (Clay Pigeon Trap), Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (Clay Pigeon Double Trap), Gagan Narang (10m Air Rifle), Abhinav Bindra (10m AirRifle), Samresh Jung (10m Air Pistol), Sanjeev Rajput (50m Rifle 3 Position), Anjali Bhagwat (50m Rifle 3 Position), Avneet Kaur Sidhu (10m Air Rifle).

Swimming: Virdawal Khade (50m, 100m, 200m Freestyle), Ankur Poseria (100m Butterfly), Sandeep Sejwal (100m, 200m Breaststrokes), Rehan Poncha (200m butterfly).

Table Tennis: Achanta Sharath Kamal, Neha Aggarwal.

Tennis: Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (doubles), Sania Mirza (singles and doubles), Sunitha Rao (doubles). Weightlifting: L Monika Devi (69kg)

Wrestling: Sushil Kumar (66 kg Freestyle), Yogeshwar Dutt (60 kg Freestyle), Rajiv Tomar (120 kg Freestyle).

Yachting: Major NS Johal (Heavyweight Dinghy).

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