Rio Summer Olympics \ Summer Paralympics 2016

[sameerph]

So, will India be one of those biting into pie ?

Btw, this is an article from Sukhwant indicating that Yogeshwar was not fully fit and should have been subjected to trials -

Yogeshwar Dutt’s tame loss shows what’s wrong with Indian wrestling right now

[jayakris]

For the record, the final list of Top-8 Performances at the Rio Olympics (2016)

1) Pusarla V. Sindhu - Women's Badminton - SILVER
2) Sakshi Malik - Women's Freestyle Wrestling 58 - T3 BRONZE
3) Dipa Karmakar - Artistic Gymnastics Women's Vault - 4th
4) Abhinav Bindra - Shooting 10m Air Rifle - 4th
5) Sania Mirza/ Rohan Bopanna - Tennis Mixed Doubles - a stinking 4th.
6) Vinesh Phogat - Women's Freestyle Wrestling 48kg - QF (injury end)
7) Srikanth Kidambi - Men's Badminton - QF
8) Vikas Krishan Yadav - Men's Boxing Middleweight (75kg) - QF
9) Team - Archery Women's recurve - QF
10) Team - Field Hockey Men's - QF
11) Gurpreet Singh - Shooting Men's Rapid Fire Pistol 25m - 7th
12) Jitu Rai - Shooting Men's 10m Pistol - 8th
13) Mairaj Khan - Shooting Men's skeet - T8th
14) Lalita Babar - Women's 3000m Steeplechase - 10th

Counted Lalita's steeplechase for 7th in qualifying, and the rarity of our T&F top-10's. Was with the 7-12 group in the final anyway.

Honorable mention top-16's: Dattu Bhokanal (rowing 13th), Manish Singh Rawat (13th in 20 km racewalking), Atanu Das (Archery #5 in qualifying)

Honorable mention top-32's: Thanackal Gopi (25th) and Kheta Ram (26th) in a field of 155 in the Marathon, 2nd and 3rd in Asia, both with personal best timings.

[jayakris]

For the record, we came down in top-8 finishes from 16 to 14 from London to Rio, and we came down in top-4 finishes from 7 to 5. I expected about 20 top-16 finishes and 8 or 9 top-4 finishes. Disappointed, but not distressed. Our federations really need to get their act together. Hell, let us bid for an Asiad or Olympics and get our act together!

[ankit1407]

Yes let's bid for one after all Kalmadi's of Indian sports need money, sorry for all the negative energy but that's how the state of affairs is in our country

[PKBasu]

We should bid to host the Asiad again, and follow-up with an Olympic bid. But unless we are winning a gold medal or two in every Olympics, it will be an embarrassment to even bid. I think Canada (1976) is the only host country not to win a gold medal as host. But before bidding for the Olympics, Canada had a much better sporting tradition than we do. This year's performance has been a big setback to the prospect of hosting the Olympics in the foreseeable future. I hope I will see it in my lifetime.

[suresh]

"I am reading a couple of reports that mention that our women marathon runners (OP Jaisha and Kavita) were not provided with water and other amenities while running the marathon. The organisers have aid stations for every 8K as opposed to 2.5K in most marathons. However, they provide stations for all nations to have their own supplies to compensate. However, OP Jaisha and Kavita had to make do with water every 8K with Jaisha collapsing at the end of the marathon." Does anybody have reliable information that this is true?

[ankit1407]

Rio 2016: No water, no officials as Jaisha struggles to complete marathon

The news item quotes her so hopefully is correct..

"Though there were officials from all other countries to provide refreshments to their runners at designated points -after every 2.5 km -there was no one from India and our desks were empty next to the country's name and flag," a distraught Jaisha told TOI here recalling her ordeal.
"I don't know how I managed to finish without getting enough water to drink. The organizers provided water and sponge only at 8-km intervals. The water from these stations lasted hardly 500m and it was almost impossible to run after the 30-km mark under the scorching sun," said Jaisha,

[sameerph]

Incidentally, a repeat of Neeraj Chopra's 86M+ throw at world juniors would have earned him a bronze medal at Rio. I know it is tough to repeat these kind of efforts but he is someone who really needs to be groomed well to turn into a potential medallist in Tokyo. (Assuming of course that he is spinach free).

[Prashant]

I see some posts above attributing the improved performance of Great Britain to hosting the last Olympics. This is incorrect, or at least incomplete. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, GB finished with ONE Gold (in rowing I think). Shortly after this, in an attempt to do better, they decided to direct a large fraction of the earnings of the national lottery to sports development. At the time, the focus was simply on any sport where there was no opportunity to turn pro. The lottery money made it possible for their top rowers, kayakers, fencers, judokas and many others to just concentrate on sport instead of a day job.

It is true that in the leadup to the London Olympics they also developed a strategy of focusing on sports where medals were more open, eg. cycling & sailing.

[sameerph]

This is an interesting article on alternative medals table -

Rio 2016 alternate medal table: How countries rank when we adjust for population and GDP

Both based on population and GDP we have lowest medal ratio.

[knarayen]

Yes, I do appreciate improvement. But, you cannot focus on improvement only and not look at where we are regressing. If you want to do a careful analysis of the improvement *and* the regression, and make a conclusion, I am fine.

Yes, the age has to be normalised by sport. For a lazy sport like equestrian or golf, you may be able to play it competitively until 50, whereas for gymnastics you may have to retire in the 20s. So, yes, for athletes in rowing where old guys can win too, that is fine.

If you want to do top-20, you have to do top quartile or top 20%. In some sports, there may only be 20 participants!

Bro, top 20% in some sports is a silver medal. If a marathon runner improves from 50th in 2008 to a 20th in 2016, I am saying lets appreciate the improvement. Let's not just count medals, lets look at the overall picture.

Lets do a comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_ ... r_Olympics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_at_ ... r_Olympics

Archery: We improved due to the fact that our archers made it to the 3 Round of 16s in 2016 vs - 0 Round of 16s in 2008.

Athletics: We improved, 34 athletes qualified in 2016 vs 16 in 2008. Good performances from Lalita Babar and Manish Singh in 2016 and I don't see any notable performances in 2008.

Badminton: We improved, 7 athletes in 2016 vs 2 in 2008. Silver medal in 2016 vs none in 2008.

Boxing: We regressed, 3 athletes in 2016 vs 5 in 2008. Bronze medal in 2008 vs none in 2016.

Field Hockey: We improved, both Men's and Women's teams qualifying and participating in 2016 while no participation in 2008. The men's team made it to the Quarter final in 2016.

Golf: We improved considering that we had 3 athletes participate in 2016 vs none in 2008. Aditi gave us hope in 2016.

Gymnastics: We improved in 2016 considering that there was no participation in 2008. Dipa came 4th in the Vault event.

Judo: We regressed, we had 2 participants in 2008 vs. 1 in 2016.

Rowing: We improved in 2016 due to Dattu's performance of ranking 13th vs Bajranglal coming 21st in 2008. But we also had a doubles team who came 18th out of 20 participants in 2008.

Shooting: Most of you will say we regressed, Abhinav got gold in 2008 and came 4th in 2016. But we also had Jitu Rai make it to the final and Mairaj Khan almost make it to the final which was encouraging. I personally think we did on par in 2016 compared to 2008. If you read Abhinav Bindra's book you will understand that the difference between a 1st place finish and a 4th place finish is too close to discount the 4th place finish. The fact that we had 2 shooters compete in the final and a 3rd shooter almost make it to the final is a greater achievement compared to what was accomplished in 2008. I would suggest that you read Abhinav's book "A SHOT AT HISTORY". He explains things better.

Swimming: We regressed, we had 4 athletes participate in 7 events in 2008 while we had 2 athletes participate in 2 events in 2016. This was disappointing for me to see.

Table Tennis: We regressed, Achanta made it to Round 2 in 2008 while none of our athletes made it past Round 1 in 2016. We had 4 athletes participate in 2016 and 2 in 2008 (This is a positive aspect for me).

Tennis: We improved, Sania and Bopanna played in the bronze medal match while in 2008 none of our athletes went that far.

Weightlifting: We improved, we had two athletes participate in 2016 and none participated in 2008. Even though it doesn't show on paper, Saikhom Chanu came pretty close to winning a medal. She is still young and will participate in the next Olympics. Karnam Malleshwari thinks Saikhom could win a medal for India in the future.

Wrestling: We improved, we sent 7 athletes in 2016 and won a bronze (Yogi has yet to wrestle). In 2008 we sent 3 athletes and won a bronze. If we didn't have the Narsingh fiasco, maybe we could have won another medal.


We improved in 10 sports and regressed in 5 sports in 2016. Overall, I think we are heading in the right direction.

Great research and thanks for the positive way forward Munnabhai. The trend is upward and with the limited facilities and participation in India this is how it has to improve.

Prof

[knarayen]

Rio 2016: No water, no officials as Jaisha struggles to complete marathon

The news item quotes her so hopefully is correct..

"Though there were officials from all other countries to provide refreshments to their runners at designated points -after every 2.5 km -there was no one from India and our desks were empty next to the country's name and flag," a distraught Jaisha told TOI here recalling her ordeal.
"I don't know how I managed to finish without getting enough water to drink. The organizers provided water and sponge only at 8-km intervals. The water from these stations lasted hardly 500m and it was almost impossible to run after the 30-km mark under the scorching sun," said Jaisha,

Yes and an important issue here is that each nation has to maintain their own water stations because of security/doping concerns...it would be easy to spike the drinks and some innocent athlete could be maligned forever. The fact that the Athletic Federation of India did not plan for this event and provide even this simple facility for their own marathon runner is grounds for firing the AAFI president, and in fact pulling up the entire AAFI and firing the whole lot of them. These guys are worse than the AITA apparently.

Prof

[kujo]

Unbelievable - no wonder her timing suffered due to the apathy of Indian federation officials.

Glad to see that Jaisha spoke up about such issues without worrying about silly repercussions from the AIFA.

thanks to munnabhai for the comparison of India's performance in 2008 Vs 2016. Regardless of whether members agree with the overall trajectory, it is important to see such sport by sport comparison....

[Atithee]

Not everything is as black and white as it seems.

http://m.timesofindia.com/sports/rio-20 ... 817326.cms

[jayakris]

Not everything is as black and white as it seems.

http://m.timesofindia.com/sports/rio-20 ... 817326.cms

Thanks for posting that, atithee. I'm traveling and couldn't post for a while today. Some journalists who observed the situation also seem to dispute Jaisha's account. I believe G.Rajaraman etc were tweeting on it.

I no longer believe all the things our athletes say. They are often as much to blame as our officials for the mess they and their coaches make.