Indians at the Asian Games!

Hi Guys,

After a bright performance in Commonwealth games, Indians have so far disappointed in the Asian Games. Not even one month has passed by, but our performance has been so poor. There have been some really spectacular performances too. Let me analyse who has disappointed and who has created new hopes.

Poor performances

The poor performance started on the very first day itself. The strongest medal hope was our Shooting contingent. They have been on the high for the past few years. Gagan Narang was one of the biggest hopes as he had won 4 gold medals in the CWG. Abhinav Bindra, India’s only gold medallist was also a big hope. Gagan was able to manage a silver in 10m air pistol whereas Abhinav didn’t even qualify for the finals (he could have claimed for a wrong judgement, but he didn’t for team’s cause). They managed to win silver in team’s event. After that our shooting contingent delivered very poorly. No one won gold. There were a very few silver and bronze medals. Frustrated, our national shooting coach, Sunny Thomas has announced his retirement after the Asian Games. He has been our national coach for the past 17 years. I can’t believe that these people were very superb just a month ago. How could a whole bunch of shooters lose form?

My next biggest expectation was Badminton. I was hoping that Saina Nehwal would win at least silver, if not gold (I knew gold was difficult as our Asian players are very strong in Badminton). But it was such a shock when I heard that she lost in the quarter finals to a world number 12th player. The way she lost was worse 8-21, 21-8, 21-19. She was in tears after the match. Don’t know what happened.

Saina Nehwal dejected after losing the match

Not just these, there has been much poor performances on all sides. Let’s get into the positives.

Incredible Performances

The two gold medallists Pankaj Advani (billiards) and Bajrang Lal (rowing) were brilliant in their respective games. Both of them have won before in top level games and they didn’t fail like our shooters. Instead they rose to the occasion and proved us what they were capable off. Hats off to them!

Bajrang Lal after winning the gold

The next astonishment was Ashish Kumar, winning India’s first ever bronze medal in Gymnastics. Indians were never capable of doing gymnastic actions and we never considered even our name in the gymnastic arena. But this 19 year old Ashish Kumar from Allahabad proved otherwise. After winning a silver and bronze in CWG, he has won this bronze in Asian games amidst stiff competition from Chinese, Japanese and Koreans.

Another scintillating performance came from the pool, when Virdhawal Khade won the bronze medal in 50m Butterfly event. It was also a rare medal. Similar to gymnastics, swimming has also been very poor in India. But this 19 year old Maharasthra boy has been India’s hope for some time now. He holds nearly all national records in swimming. After winning the medal, in the press conference he surprised everyone by saying he is better than the other 2 medal winning swimmers as he is younger. The next he was only able to be 13th in the 100m Freestyle event. He must learn to speak carefully further.

Virdhawal Khade after winning the bronze medal

Indians have also been able to perform well in rowing team event. Apart from Bajrang Lal our Indian team members have performed well to win some medals. I read a terrible thing in newspaper today. For rowing, our rowing committee (or some equivalent governing body) has imported 8 boats from Italy. Our customs officials have not allowed it inside saying some idiotic reasons. So our rowing team has been rowing with old boats (boats they used in 2002 Asian Games) and boats that our military has lend them. With a government like this, we can’t do much. Despite all these problems our rowers rock in the games.

Our Indians have also been performing well in many other games like Wushu. They are doing well in Tennis and Boxing. I hope we will get medals in them too. If our cricket board had sent a second class team to the games, we would have surely got 2 gold as all other teams are also engaged.

Let’s see how things go in the next few days. At least hope that India will break into the top 10 teams.

Happy Reading!!!