Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Pradhan, Kunal

Titel

Rio Olympics 2016: How Indian athletes marked their presence despite a broken system: The Indian achievement at Rio may seem insignificant, but our athletes are marking their presence despite a broken system

Ist Teil von

• India today. North American edition, 2016-09

Ort / Verlag

New Delhi: Living Media India, Limited

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Beschreibungen/Notizen

•   Rio was the first time in India's Olympic journey that those who were only following our athletes had something to watch every day. Two shooters made the final in their events, and Beijing gold medallist Abhinav Bindra missed a bronze by one micron, or a thousandth of a millimetre. The Indian hockey team, undisputed kings of stickwork three-quarters of a century ago, reached the quarter-finals for the first time in 36 years. An Indian track athlete, Lalita Babar, made the final for the first time since P.T. Usha in Los Angeles in 1984. The tennis pair of Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna earned themselves a shot at a medal. Indian badminton, known as a one-woman sport till four years ago, discovered two new stars in Kidambi Srikanth, who lost a gruelling quarter-final to defending champion Lin Dan of China, and Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, who rattled and almost upset world number one Carolina Marin in the gold medal match to cement the 'silver lining' analogy. And, perhaps above all, a little-known 23-year-old from Tripura, not even five feet tall, announced herself to the gymnastics world by attempting and executing the dangerous two-and-half somersault Produnova vault to finish fourth in a highly technical discipline. [Dipa Karmakar] proved to a bemused audience in the gymnastics centre at Rio, and to millions of Indians who had stayed up half a world away, that our athletes can break through even in sports in which we have no tradition, no legacy and no expertise. She is the Jamaican bobsled team, which made it to the 1988 Calgary Olympics practising on snowless slopes, and Eddie 'the Eagle', the first British ski jumper to qualify for the same Winter Olympics, rolled into one.