Monday, August 6, 2012

India at Olympics 2012- Day 8 and 9

Day 8 and 9

Took a break on day 8.

Saina's Bronze medal win was not inspiring enough I guess to continue the diary on consecutive 8th day. But back after 9th day.

It was heartening to see Saina win a medal for India. Don't know about other players of India, but Saina definitely has tried very hard to reach this position.
Although the way she got the medal was not the way we expected.
At one point it appeared Saina is no match to her opponent and she is going to loose this match also in straight sets. But then Saina fought back into the game. She finally started getting rhythm and she managed to bring the match up to 20-18. That point her opponent who actually stands 2nd in world ranking got injured. But it was apparent that she was looking tired for last 4-5 rallies and in spite of this tiredness when she tried to pick shuttle far behind than her expectation, she stretched herself bit too much. Her body though did not supported this extra stretch which resulted in the injury. She tried to get back to the court with some quick medication but that didn't worked and she finally had to give up on the match.

I am pretty sure had this not happened, Saina surely would have made up for the lost set and recovered to win the match. I believe Saina totally deserved the medal.

Saina confirmed what I said in earlier post. She apologized to the media for keeping them at a distance earlier because she wanted her racket to do the talking. And she has succeeded in doing that.

Now that Saina's event is over, where else can we expect medals coming for India. There are three hopes I know of.

First and foremost is Vijender Singh in Boxing. He is playing his quarter final on day 10 and if he succeed in that he possibly will make sure one more medal for India. But looking at all the dubious decisions in Boxing arena where mostly Indian boxers are at the receiving end, I am little skeptical about his win.

Other possibility of medal again comes from Boxing but from a female boxer Mary Kom. Female Boxing has been introduced for the first time in Olympics. I wish Mary Kom all the best wishes of India and believe she moves ahead.

In Wrestling, last time Bronze winner Sushil Kumar is one of the main contenders. I have little knowledge of wrestling so I will restrict myself to wait and watch and wish Sushil Kumar all the success in his event.

Apart from that, not much to hope for Indians I believe. In athletics I watched most of the events and was surprised that none of the race included Indian athletes. India did participated in Disc throw, long jump etc but no representation in Running competition. That was bit surprising.

On International level, two things that attracted my attention.

Pistorius reached Semifinal of 400 meters race.


It was an amazing visual to eye to see Pistorius running the same race with other healthy racers. Although he stood last in his semifinal heat, it is worth mentioning that he qualified for the Semifinal. At the end of the heat, the winner of the heat asked for the badge of Pistorius which showed respect towards this extra ordinary person.


Day 9 finished with 100 meters Men's race which of course Usain Bolt easily won.

I saw all the qualifying rounds, semi finals and the final race.Usain Bolt was amazing. He ruled all the three races he took. The qualifying round looked so simple for him. In last 10 meters he was actually checking where all other runners stand compared to him before finishing the race.
The Semifinal was no different. He slightly increased his speed compared to qualifying round and won the race easily.
In the finals, he once again stood ahead all other runners with the second runner taking as good as 0.12 seconds more than Bolt. It appeared as if he could have done even better. In comparison the other Jamaican runner Powell looked pale. Initially he failed to even qualify for the Finals, but later got a chance to run the finals. I was suspicious that he is not in his form and stand no chance to come any closer to Bolt. The way he ended the race didn't look natural. He was in race for first 3-4 seconds, but then he started lagging behind as good as 4-5 other runners, forget Bolt. And at that point suddenly he got an injury. May be it was while trying to gear up that his body didn't supported.

All in all it was a great Sunday. Lot of good things coming up in next few days with very little but still some hope for medals for India.

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