Slightly disappointing last 2 days in terms of golds that we could have won. In fact 2014 was a similar story, because we seemed to lose most of the finals. Let's hope we win the men's doubles in badminton, but as we are against an English pair, it's only going to end in the usual way
Lost 1st set 21-13. Fought a bit better in 2nd set, but well beaten, so we end up with 26 golds and 66 overall. Lost all 3 gold medal opportunities today. 3rd in the final table and probably our best showing in the CWG given the number of events that suited us.
Looks like there is an agenda to systematically remove or reduce our stronger events by the CWG organisers.
Yes, we ended up with 26 medals- 7 in Shooting, 5 in weightlifting, 5 in wrestling, 3 in boxing, 3 in table tennis, 2 in badminton and 1 in athletics.
We ended up topping the medal table in 5 sports - comfortably in shooting, weightlifting and wrestling and by small margin in badminton and table tennis- in badminton we had equal golds as England and Malaysia but more medals, similarly in table tennis we had same golds as Singapore but more medals.
We did not top medal tally in any sport in 2014. So, that is major gain of these games.
Sindhu seems to have a finals problem. Not quite choking, because she plays very well in them usually, but does seem to lose narrowly in the end. The previous finals (Olympics, World Championship) went to three games, this one at the CWG was two games, but both were very close. Sadly, close losses in finals have become the norm for Sindhu.
ssp wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:27 am
Looks like there is an agenda to systematically remove or reduce our stronger events by the CWG organisers.
If we can market this to the Indian market, we should do that and take over the administration or control the administration. That is the long -run view. In the short run, we should just take it as a challenge and keep doing better at the other events. A bit of adversity will help distribute funds to sports that we are not that great in ... yet.
It is always ironic to me that the land of ahimsa is great in the killer sports in the Olympics: shooting, boxing, wrestling and the might-is-right-sport of weightlifting. Badminton is the only exception. I hope we start generating more exceptions. Unlike, say in sprints, I do not think we have a genetic barrier in several sports, e.g., table tennis.
Table tennis is one sport where we have seen huge improvement over last games. In 2014, we had only 1 silver in doubles to show. From there to topping the medal table with 3 golds and 8 overall medals is a phenomenal improvement. The federation must have done something right to achieve this. I hear a lot of our players playing in ITTF tour events these days. So, perhaps that exposure to higher level events has increased player's confidence.
But, I hope we use this to build the base for further success. Like Volleyball ( which I said earlier), table tennis is quite widely played at least in the cities in India. As Prasen said, no great physical prowess is needed for this. So, we can do as well in table tennis as we do in badminton. Manika Batra is ranked at a career high #58 in the ITTF womens singles rankings but beat world #4 twice in these games. Can she make it to top 25 to start with say within a year. That can improve the profile of the sport further. If we can so something in Asiad-getting close to medals even if not actually winning anything can be big.
ssp wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:27 am
Looks like there is an agenda to systematically remove or reduce our stronger events by the CWG organisers.
Fortunately, the Asian bloc is strong enough that none of our stronger events are going away from the Olympics. We need to work with them to increase the number of medals in these events (add team events in badminton for example).
sameerph wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:16 pmBut, I hope we use this to build the base for further success. Like Volleyball ( which I said earlier), table tennis is quite widely played at least in the cities in India. As Prasen said, no great physical prowess is needed for this. So, we can do as well in table tennis as we do in badminton.
Plus, we should have some advantage from the famous "Indian wrist" which is supposedly looser than any other, like they say (though I don't know if there is scientific evidence on this). We have had some great ones in other sports (cricket, hockey, tennis) who were the best in the world in wrist work. Wouldn't that be of benefit in table tennis too? Again, I am no expert...
[I just know that my son, when in high school, was ranked third in USA in ground-ball stats in lacrosse, which requires great wrist work. He was a sort of a legend around here and was called the "Hoover" for how his stick would pick up a ball from the ground like a vacuum cleaner. I chalked that up to the Indian wrist!]
Sin Hombre wrote: ↑Sun Apr 15, 2018 5:14 pm
Investing in table tennis is the hard way to get Olympic medals.
Possibly. I did not use it to mean literally just TT. I did not give it any thought to identify where we can do well. I meant something like TT where we do not have a genetic disadvantage. What you said below gives us sports where we can do better.
There is no genetic reason why we cannot compete on rowing/canoeing/kayaking. We just need to follow what China did here.
I'm not sure how much being China's most popular sport matters. Admittedly my trips to China have been to business centers (Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen) but I didn't see much sporting activity in any of these places or a particularly fit citizenry. I believe their sporting stars come from their communist era sports schools so it only matters where they have invested. Typically, they only do well in the "less deep" sports where their sports school machinery can do well against less competition. They don't have much success in deeper international sports such as soccer, tennis, athletics, or swimming (except for a short time when they used the other communist era technique of state sponsored doping).
As far as rowing is concerned, it is a less deep sport but it requires length (in the bigger boats the optimal optimal height is around 6-3 to 6-8) and core strength, so not sure Indians (or Chinese) are particularly suited for it except perhaps in the light weight categories where I don't think there are many Olympic events. The only other reason it may be worth trying (other than being a less-deep sport) is that rowing is a sport where you don't start seriously until you are around 14-15 even in the developed countries, so our disorganized sporting apparatus may have a chance to start to identify talent when it isn't too late.
Going back to sports that the CWG are keeping, there are lots of medals in cycling and swimming. These are dominated by the 'white' countries. I'm in favour of keeping sports that are popular in most of the commonwealth countries and removing cycling at least.
Excellent analysis of our medals hauls by Nachiketa Guha (@BrandNachiketa) on Twitter.
On the surface #GC2018 with 26 Gold Medals would ONLY appear as our 3rd best CWG haul behind Delhi 2010 (38) and Manchester 2002 (30). However when we scratch the surface we shall discover the following
15 of the 30 Golds at #Manchester2002 came from shooting pairs (8); weightlifting snatch (3) and weightlifting clean and jerk (3); events currently discontinued. Without them we had 15 Gold medals in Manchester.
Similarly 15 of the 38 Golds at #Delhi2010 came from Shooting Pairs(7), Archery (3), Greco-Roman Wrestling (4) and Tennis (1). Accounting for them before comparing it with #GC2018 gives us an updated figure of 23 Gold medals from Delhi.
Thus based on currently active events
#GC2018 (26) upstages
#Delhi2010 (23) as well as
#Manchester2002 (15)
Concurrently, IF we are to HYPOTHETICALLY award medals for snatch, clean and jerk & pairs at #GC2018 we discover that we would have won 3 snatch, 4 Clean and Jerk & a whopping 11 Gold Medals from shooting pairs; thus giving an updated count of 26+3+4+11=44 for comparison
Thus in such a comparision too #GC2018 with 44 would surpass Delhi (38) and Manchester (30).
Well played India.
