Greatest Indian Women Athlete

[Varma]

I think any pioneer like Deepa deserves a few extra brownie points. Leave alone at the world level, I never thought I would ever see an Indian competing for a gymnastics medal even at Asian games. To raise to such a level with little or no infrastructure or coaching should put Deepa in the top cluster of achievers.

- Varma

[prasen9]

Sorry but this is a laughable list! Women's weightlifing and boxing are sports with with very little depth. Even in the developed countries, hardly any girls look at these as a sport that they would specialize in. Those that do end up there often by accident. Likewise, women's cricket has played in only a few countries with mostly the less developed/dysfunctional countries leading the way.

There are some of us who do not care about depth. The Olympics agrees. It does not give two gold medals in tennis versus one gold medal in badminton or women's boxing. If you are the top of the world, you are the top of the world. Most multi-sport meets do not try to figure out how difficult the sport is. Or how many people play it. Etc.

[prasen9]

Then, by the same token, don't you need to consider how long Usha & Anju were anywhere near the top of their sports? Usha's claim to fame is based largely on ONE race. I appreciate that she dominated Asia for a while, but that was when no one from Asia was a world beater.

Yes, we do. Anju was consistently in the top 6 or so for quite some time. Usha would also have been had there been no doping, imho. I would rate both these efforts to be better than being world #27 in tennis.

Another test would be this. Assume you have a boon from God. She comes to you and says you can have a sports career exactly the same as *one* woman sport-person from India. Whom would you choose? I would choose to be P.V. Sindhu. Forum-members, ask yourself this question and honestly answer this question. You get to just choose one --- no hemming and hawing. Whom would you choose?

Maybe some kind moderator would move this discussion that has been seriously off-topic to another thread? That way, we can find it better in the future instead of it being buried in one of these umpteen tournament threads?

[Varma]

Prasen...why Sindhu? Just curious to know the rationale behind your choice!

- Varma

[Prashant]

Assume you have a boon from God. She comes to you and says you can have a sports career exactly the same as *one* woman sport-person from India. Whom would you choose?

At this point, I would chose Sania Mirza without the slightest hesitation. But, I would caveat that I want to see the rest of Saina's & Sindhu's careers first.

[prasen9]

Prasen...why Sindhu? Just curious to know the rationale behind your choice!

- Varma

Because I value an Olympic silver more than anything else. Sania has possibly earned more money. Sindhu will possibly have enough to have a good life. That Olympic silver medal would give me the most satisfaction. It does not matter to me one iota if Sindhu's career ends tomorrow. Playing in a Olympic final and getting a silver medal would be what I would want, say, for my daughter. Not that it will happen though.

Maybe we should make this a poll. I voted for Sindhu. Sania has one vote above from Prashant. So, it's S 1, S 1. Let's see what the others think. Since Varma will ask each of you, maybe you can give your rationale in 2-3 sentences so that he does not have to post after each of your posts.

[gbelday]

I vote for Sania. She got to top 30 in the world with mediocre coaching. If she had the right coaching at a young age (including fitness coaching, a better serve etc.), we would have seen more success. She came close to getting a bronze.

Sindhu is a close second. She had Gopi to guide her.

[suresh]

Moderators: It would be nice if this discussion about our best player/athlete is moved to a new thread. One can even add a poll to it!

[vatsal323]

Yeah, a poll would be nice and insightful!

[sameerph]

I am trying to move all the posts related to this in new thread.

[sameerph]

Done. Have to check how to create a poll.

[Atithee]

If you've played tennis doubles, you know how athletic one has to be (or not). If you've played singles in both badminton and tennis (3 set with super tiebreak), you would know which one is more grueling. Comparing Sania to Sidhu on athleticism is not even close.

Are we discussing highest athleticism or world class success?

[arjun2761]

Not sure what "we" are discussing, since everyone has their own most valuable feature in this intrinsically unresolvable discussion.

From my perspective, I'm looking at what is most difficult to attain (hence greatest lifetime achievement) in the field of athletic sports (so leaving out the likes of chess or eSports) which are not athletic sports.

Some of factors in my determination:
(1) How global the sport is to determine how competitive a sport is. Factors including active participation by developed sports cultures as that determines the competition more than the sheer number of people (example of US versus Indonesia).
(2) Level of achievement in that sport again normalized to the level of competition. Again winning the Kabaddi WC may rank lower than finishing 30th in the soccer world cup or top 10 in badminton may equal top 100 in tennis and so on. Likewise, winning an Olympic medal is women's weight lifting isn't the same as winning a medal in the 100 meters in track.
(3) Duration of achievement. One sporadic event counts less than someone excelling over a length of time.

For me, it's kinds of an overall judgement like say the Laureus awards makes across multiple sports on an annual basis.

[rajitghosh]

For defining the popularity of a sport, whether it is played in the US cannot be a criteria. While US has the largest population among Western countries, China is 5 times US population, India is 4 times and Indonesia is 85%. So a sport like badminton that is popular all across Far East and India accounting for more than half the world's population as well as all of Europe including Russia and Spain has to be counted as a major global sport.
Rather tennis has lesser following in the Far East and China compared to badminton.
Also, while women's boxing and weightlifting may have fewer women pursuing, maybe because of the physical nature of these sports, somebody like Marykom winning 5 world championships or Malleshwari winning 2 world championships and both of them winning Olympic medals is a humungous achievement in a country where even the men win very little.
As far as Usha goes, while people remember her Olympic race, she also finished 5th in the World Cup if I remember right and performed credibly in the Grand Prix events in those days apart from winning nearly 15 golds at the Asian level.
Saina apart from world championship and Olympic medals has won 3 Super series Premier events (almost equivalent of tennis Grand Slams- anyway all the top players play in these) and 7 more Super Series events (equivalent of ATP 1000 events- most top players play in these also) apart from numerous Grand Prix Gold events and being world No. 1.
Comparing top-10 in badminton with top-100 in tennis may not be right as players like Saina and Sindhu have reached there on merit against really tough competition from the Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans and Taiwanese.
I don't think Sania singles achievements come anywhere close. Yes in a country starved of top-50 tennis players since Ramesh Krishnan's retirement, she has performed really well and among Indian woman tennis players she is certainly the best.

[Prashant]

For defining the popularity of a sport, whether it is played in the US cannot be a criteria. While US has the largest population among Western countries, China is 5 times US population, India is 4 times and Indonesia is 85%. So a sport like badminton that is popular all across Far East and India accounting for more than half the world's population as well as all of Europe including Russia and Spain has to be counted as a major global sport.

You have to temper that by the drastically lower fraction of the population that plays sport at all in India/Indonesia/China than in Europe/the Americas. And then by the fraction of that subset that play a specific sport. The question is, how many people, globally, play the sport in a competitive fashion. I would be very skeptical that more people play badminton than tennis. I could be wrong, but I'd have to see some hard stats that are not based just on overall population of the countries where they are popular.