Wednesday 30 May 2012

Olympics .. here we come !!

The Olympics season is coming up and the Indian Athletes are raring to go... Many athletes are peaking at the right moment and have qualified for the London Olympics.

London Bound..

The Lodon bound berths are filling up fast with last of the qualifying tournaments / matches taking place now and will do so throughout June. The Indians are making good use of these last ditch opportunities and sealing their places on the plane to London.

Some of the recent Indian wins ....

MC Mary Kom qualified for the women's boxing in the Flyweight category (51 Kgs). - By the way, this women's category is featuring for the first time in Olympics - so well done Mary Kom !!

Sushil Kumar also won and qualified.

The women's Archery (Recurve) Team - has also qualified.

Earlier men's Hockey team qualified winning the last qualifying tournament and taking the only spot available... It would have been disastrous but the Nobbs-boys made it thru ...phew !!

Let's enjoy the Qualififcations for the time being..

I know, the critics will be out comparing the standards and statistics of our Athletes.. but I would at this moment enjoy the qualifications across various disciplines.. giving us additional interest in the games :-)..
by the way, till now about 70 Athletes have qualified (including 16 member Men's hockey team). Lets see what the final tally comes out to be.

Do send in your comments on your take on this... lets build it up for the Indian Contingent !!

List of qualifiers till now :

Archery
Laishram Bombayla Devi, Deepika Kumari, Chekrovolu Swuro and Jayanta Talukdar
Athletics
Men's 20 km walk: Gurmeet Singh, Baljinder Singh, Irfan Kolothum Thodi
Women's discus throw: Krishna Poonia, Seema Antil
Men's discus throw: Vikas Gowda
Men's shot put: Om Prakash Karhana
Women's 800m: Tintu Luka
Men's triple jump: Renjith Maheshwary
Women's 3000 m steeplechase: Sudha Singh
Women's triple jump: Mayookha Johny
Men's 50km walk: Basanta Bahadur Rana or Sandeep Kumar
Men's marathon: Ram Singh Yadav
Badminton
Women's singles: Saina Nehwal
Men's singles: Parupalli Kashyap
Mixed doubles: Jwala Gutta, Valiyaveetil Diju
Women's doubles: Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa
Boxing
Men's light flyweight(49kg): Devendro Singh
Men's bantamweight (56kg): Shiva Thapa
Men's lightweight (60kg): Jai Bhagwan
Men's light welterweight (64kg): Manoj Kumar
Men's welterweight (69kg): Vikas Krishan Yadav
Men's middleweight (75kg): Vijender Singh
Men's light heavyweight (81kg): Sumit Sangwan
Women's flyweight (51kg): Mary Kom
Men's Hockey: Goalkeepers: Bharat Chetri (captain) and P.R. Sreejesh.
Defenders: V.R.Raghunath, Ignace Tirkey, Sandeep Singh.
Midfielders: Sardar Singh (vice captain), Gurbaj Singh, Birendra Lakra, Manpreet Singh.
Forwards: S.V. Sunil, Gurwinder Singh Chandi, Shivendra Singh, Danish Mujtaba, Tushar Khandker, Dharamvir Singh, S.K. Uthappa.
Stand-bys: Sarvanjit Singh and Kothajit Singh
Swimming Judo
Women's 63kg: Garima Chaudhary
Rowing: India has qualified two boats with up to three athletes in men's single sculls and lightweight double sculls
Shooting 
Men's 50m rifle 3 positions: Sanjeev Rajput
Men's 50m rifle prone: Joydeep Karmakar
Men's 10m air rifle: Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang
Men's 25m rapid fire pistol: Vijay Kumar
Men's double trap: Ronjan Sodhi
Men's trap: Manavjit Singh Sandhu
Women's 25m pistol: Rahi Sarnobat, Heena Sidhu
Women's 10m air pistol: Annuraj Singh
Women's trap: Shagun Chowdhary

Men's 100m freestyle: Virdhawal Khade
Men's 100m breaststroke: Sandeep Sejwal
Men's 200m freestyle: Aaron D'Souza or Virdhawal Khade
Men's 200m breaststroke: Sandeep Sejwal
Men's 1500m freestyle: Saurabh Sangvekar Table tennis
Men's singles: Soumyajit Ghosh Swimming
Men's 100m freestyle: Virdhawal Khade
Men's 100m breaststroke: Sandeep Sejwal
Men's 200m freestyle: Aaron D'Souza or Virdhawal Khade
Men's 200m breaststroke: Sandeep Sejwal
Men's 1500m freestyle: Saurabh Sangvekar
Weightlifting:
Men's 69kg: Katulu Ravi Kumar
Women's 48kg: Ngangbam Soniya Chanu
Wrestling
Men's freestyle 55kg: Amit Kumar
Men's freestyle 60kg: Yogeshwar Dutt
Men's freestyle 66kg: Sushil Kumar
Men's freestyle 74kg: Narsingh Pancham Yadav
Women's freestyle 55kg: Geeta Phogat
Table tennis
Men's singles: Soumyajit Ghosh Women's singles: Ankita Das
Tennis
Mens' doubles: Leander Paes
Weightlifting:
Men's 69kg: Katulu Ravi Kumar Women's 48kg: Ngangbam Soniya Chanu
Wrestling
Men's freestyle 55kg: Amit Kumar
Men's freestyle 60kg: Yogeshwar Dutt
Men's freestyle 66kg: Sushil Kumar
Men's freestyle 74kg: Narsingh Pancham Yadav
Women's freestyle 55kg: Geeta Phogat Women's singles: Ankita Das
Tennis
Men's doubles: Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, (Rohan Bopanna)*, (Somdev Devvarman)*, (Sania Mirza)*
* - to be confirmed based on ATP rankings

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Vishy.. the old fox

Vishwanathan Anand won the 8th game of the World Chess Championship match to hold Boris Gelfand 4-4. This win comes after a shock loss in the 7th game for Anand.

Anand, who has been off-color for last few years, seemed to be going down that path when he lost the 7th game and all the critics were all over him. However, the old fox returned the compliments in style by shutting out Gelfand in the very nextgame and that too within 17 moves !! This win should boost Anand's confidence and take his tally of titles further..

Way to go Anand!!