The Sports-India Community

It does not seem like we have a thread for this as yet. Time to start this now that qualification has started in many of the sports and government announcing schemes for support of athletes.

Government of India has identified 45 sportspersons, in the disciplines of Athletics, Badminton, Boxing, Shooting, Wrestling and Sailing, for customized training at Institutes/ Centers, having world class facilities/high quality support staff, under the guidance of reputed coaches for the Target Olympic Podium (TOP) Scheme. Criteria for selection included recent performance, consistency in performance, performance vis-a-viz international standards, etc. There has been representation from Ms Jwala Gutta and Ms Ashwini Ponnappa, Badminton Players (Doubles) for their inclusion in the TOP Scheme. There is provision for periodic review of performance of sportspersons, who reach the prescribed benchmark, for induction in the Scheme.

# Athletes Fund allocatedtill Olympic 2016 (Rs in Lacs)
Athletics (5 Athletes)
1 Vikas Gowda - Men’s Discus Throw 112.5
2 Seem Antil - Women’s Discus Throw 75
3 Arpinder Singh - Men’s Triple Jump 45
4 Khushbir Kaur - 20km Race Walk 45
5 K.T. Irfan - 20km Race Walk 45

Badminton (6 Athletes)
6 Saina Nehwal - Women’s Singles 90
7 P.V. Sindhu - Women’s Singles 90
8 P. Kashyap - Men’s Singles 90
9 K. Srikanth - Men’s Singles 90
10 Guru Saidutt - Men’s Singles 60
11 H.S. Prannoy - Men’s Singles 60

Boxing (8 Athletes)
12 MC May Kom - Women’s 51kg 75
13 Sarita Devi - Women’s 60kg 75
14 Pinki Jangra - Women’s 51kg 45
15 Devendro Singh - Men’s 49kg 75
16 Shiva Thapa - Men’s 56kg 45
17 Mandeep Jangra - Men’s 60kg 45
18 Vijender Singh - Men’s 75kg 75
19 Vikas Krishan - Men’s 75kg 45

Shooting (17 Athletes)
20 Abhinav Bindra - Men’s 10m Air Rifle 112.5
21 Gagan Narang - Men’s 50m Rifle Prone 112.5
22 Sanjeev Rajput - Men’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions 112.5
23 Ayonika Paul - Women’s 10m Air Rifle 60
24 Apurvi Chandela - Women’s 10m Air Rifle 60
25 Heena Sidhu - Women’s 10m Air Pistol 75
26 Shweta Chaudhary - Women’s 10m Air Pistol 45
27 Malaika Goel - Women’s 10m Air Pistol 45
28 Jitu Rai - Men’s 10m Air Pistol, 50m Pistol 75
29 P.N. Prakash - Men’s 10m Air Pistol 75
30 Vijay Kumar - Men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol 75
31 Rahi Sarnobat - Women’s 25m Pistol 45
32 Anisa Sayyed - Women’s 25m Pistol 45
33 Manavjit Sandhu - Men’s Trap 112.5
34 Ankur Mittal - Men’s Double Trap 60
35 Mohd Asab - Men’s Double Trap 60
36 Kynan Chenai - Men’s Trap 60

Wrestling (7 Athletes)
37 Sushil Kumar - Men’s 74kg 75
38 Yogeshwar Dutt - Men’s 66kg 75
39 Bajrang - Men’s 66kg 45
40 Amit Kumar - Men’s 57kg 75
41 Rahul Aware - Men’s 57kg 45
42 Babita Kumari - Women’s 53kg 45
43 Vinesh Phogat - Women’s 48kg 45

Sailing (2 Athletes)
44 Varsha Gautam - 49erFX 45
45 Aishwarya N. - 49erFX 45

Total 3007.5

Some of the selections are puzzling. What for is Vijender Singh getting Rs. 75 lakhs ? He is participating more in TV shows these days. How is Sanjeev Rajput bracketed in top category when he has hardly achieved anything in last couple of years. Jiti Rai should have been there in the top category. Also does the saling duo have any chance of coming near the medals ?

And why no tennis players ( Sania, Leander, Rohan ) ?

This is great! I hope there is some accountability of how the money is spent. And I also hope this ain't just "an announcement" and that the funds are made available quickly. Surprised to see no one in Tennis. They need the money too!!

Other notable exclusions are Indrajeet singh, Tintu luka and Sandeep sejwal

Shot putter Inderjeet Singh became the first Indian to qualify for the Olympics in track and field events by winning the men's shot put gold with a stunning effort of 20.65m ... The Olympic qualification period commenced only yesterday and is 20.50m for the men's shot put.

So far only the walkers -Khushbir Kaur, Manish Rawat, Sandeep Kumar - and OP Jaisha in women's marathon have made the grade for the Rio Olympics after the qualification period for the road races began on January 1.

In shooting, only Jitu Rai in 50m Pistol Men at World championship 2014 and Apurvi Chandela in 10m Air Rifle at Changwon World cup 2015.

Inderjeet wins ticket to Rio

That was a very good performance by Inderjeet Singh. Also in US, Prem Kumar has had another 8 meter + jump in the US. Hopefully, both of these would now be included in the top scheme and given right amount of funding.

The qualification standards for Rio Olympics Athletics were lowered by IAAF recently. In the mens discus, the mark was reduced from 66M to 65M and with that, Vikas Gowda qualified for Rio Olympics as he has thrown over that distance earlier this year.

Good to see that he seem to be the only one from Athletics with an outside chance of a medal for us.

Besides Gowda, the other two Indians who have benefitted from the revision of entry standards were Sapna in womens 20km race walk and Nitendra Singh Rawat in mens marathon.

With that the total number of athletes qualified for Rio Olympics for us goes up to 60 - (32 from Hockey, 15 from Athletics, 8 from Shooting, 4 from Archery and 1 from wrestling).

With large number of qualifications still to come in Badminton, Boxing, Tennis, Wrestling still to come we should certainly go up from London Olympic qualification number of athletes of 83 but have a very good chance of going ahead of 100.

This is in interesting article on India's performances at the Olympics and comparison with other nations -

India high on GDP & population, bottom-scraper at Olympics

So, even if one compares with the lowest performing countries with $2 trillion GDP ( at that time), Japan and Brazil - we should have 3 times of current medal tally i.e around 18. We will consider a big achievement even if we reach a double digit number of 10 in Rio.

Is GDP and population is good metric? I would think per capita income is a better metric. Or maybe some combination of per-capita income and population density? Interestingly, Singapore and Hong Kong are low in this rating despite they being "rich" (relatively).

Soumyajit Ghosh in men's singles and Manika Batra in women's singles won stage I (South Asia Zone) of Asian Qualifiers. Thus they qualified in Table Tennis for Rio 2016

Achantha Sharat Kamal also made it to Rio by winning second stage of the Asian qualifiers. Mouma Das lost in the final round for a qualifying round. But, she still has a chance if she win a play off with a player from another group.

Mouma Das also qualified for Rio in the playoff. It seems that per Olympic rules only two men and two women per country can make the cut. So India has already achieved that.

What are forum members' expectation of our medal count this year with less than 4 months to go?

We look in bad shape across multiple sports right now from badminton (starting 2015 with 2 players in the top 3 to even Saina struggling now), boxing (one quota place so far?), archery (3/8 possible quota places at the moment) to wrestling. Even repeating Beijing's 3 medals looks tough to me.

At this point only hope is a medal from shooting, rest all are struggling..i think realistically we might hope to get
2-4 (shooting) - we have capable folks but as we know its a very tough sport in terms of competition, still hope Jitu, Gurpret, Heeena, Apurvi, Manavjeet, Abhinav, Gagan can rise to the occaaion..

1 ( wrestling)

1 (boxing - hoping we can have more qualify but this looks lIke more of a wish list as of now)

1(archery/badminton - unlikely again but a distinct possibility)

Dipa Karmakar creates history by becoming the first Indian gymnast, ever to qualify for the olympics. Wow