2014 Commonwealth Games

[Prasad]

Man, that vinesh, she just flipped that englistani wrestler with ease! Shq was at her muscles, so told her to get muscles like her

[Suraj]

Gold for Sushil as well. Three won, one more final to go in wrestling today. More wrestling events in the next 2 days, esp Yogeshwar Dutt's.

[Ranjani Brow]

Sushil Kumar beats the shit out of Martian Paki Q Abbas . Wins GOLD
Class apart .

[sum]

^^Sushil swats awaythe TFTA

[chilarai]

any youtube video of sushil and also amit trampling the tftas ?

[Prasad]

That amul baby Amit who won gold is just 20! He could be our next Sushil at the next OG

[Suraj]

The games feed has it

They just showed Vinesh's women's final win, and Amit's before that. Sushil should be next. Depends on the whim of the streaming team though - they keep randomly switching sports.

Amit Kumar has great potential. He won the silver in the world championship as well. Can win in Rio 2016 .

[Prasad]

Vinesh, from bhiwani is just 19! So many young talents. All the participants, especially the medal winners shuold get govt support for them to compete and excel at the AG and OG.

[Suraj]

Many of our medal winners are youngsters between 18-22 . The shooting team in particular, is in transition. They deliberately chose these games to blood many youngsters at the international stage. They may do better in AG, and should be certainly much more competent by Rio 2016 so that we can realistically expect several medals in those games as well.

Check out the ages of the weightlifting medalists. The women are mostly under 20, and the men just over that age. Same for shooting, and now wrestling. Sushil is a grandpa in comparison. He's just on a mission to complete his Olympic medal evolution from bronze in 2008 to silver in 2012 and hopefully gold in Rio. May he succeed.

[Prasad]

Yeah. Any idea about our archers?

[Suraj]

Archery is not part of CWG 2014.

[Supratik]

The shooting stalwarts except Bindra underperformed. Hope they are saving for the AG.

[Suraj]

This article in the Indian Express has a lot about what's happening in shooting:
The Bang Bang Club
Summary
* NRAI has been extremely proactive with identifying talent.
* Very competitive selection process. Seniors not allowed to rest on laurels
* Youngsters being groomed early and asked to take on seniors.
* Those who missed the cut miss the bus, regardless of prior world/olympic performances.

This is why several previous known names are missing, e.g. Narang did not make the cut in 10m air rifle despite being an Olympic medalist in 2012. Samaresh Jung too missed out. Jung actually talks glowingly of the new system in the article, despite missing the cut.

Overall this is a good approach. We'll see some stutter here at CWG2014, but it builds the base for a Chinese style range of strong shooters across the board, instead of depending on 1-2 mahdis. This is how you become a sporting power, not be hoping and praying one person will overcome all odds.

[Ashokk]

Tomar looses 0-3

[Ranjani Brow]

Does anybody know what's been done with the facilities in Delhi constructed for CWG ? I hope they're not laying waste.
The indoor shooting range was marvelous.

[Chandragupta]

Sushil's gold :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtgh-esIiVg

[Suraj]

The 'English' lady whom Vinesh defeated had a name that made me curious. Yana Rattigan didn't sound like an Iglistani name. Wiki chacha reveals the truth - her name is Yana Stadnik, and she is the sister of Ukrainian Andriy Stadnik, who got the silver in Beijing 2008 in the same event where Sushil got bronze. She only qualified for English representation this year. Yet another imported medalist to grace the western nations' medal lists.

[disha]

Thanks for the best CWG coverage so far!

[SwamyG]

About 30-40% of the medals in events in which India won in 2010 are not there in these games.

Why? Probably need to grow some spine or let BCCI do the talking.

[Suraj]

Host gets to choose elective sports. Nothing wrong with that. CWG is NOT modeled on OG. It makes no effort to encompass all Olympic events and never ever has. It was and is nothing more than a post-colonial party. They have stupid games like Lawn Bowels, whatever that involves. CWG is also not a good barometer for performance standards in the sports we are good at, except in boxing. At least next time it will be easier because AG will move to 2019 while CWG will be in 2018.

Asian Games provides world standard competition in shooting, boxing, weightlifting and wrestling. Plus all Olympic sports and events are played. Also, we clearly used these games to experiment with juniors, who have performed creditably as well, whereas UK teams are all at near Olympic strength for their home games, while Australia is trying to prove that their London 2012 performance was an aberration.

We should end with around 15-16 golds, considering the surviving boxers and remaining wrestling events. Close to 20 would be a bonus. Remember, half of our 10 golds are from those between 18 and 22 years old, as well as several silvers and bronzes.

For a long time we'd come back empty handed claiming we didn't have 'exposure'. Now we have people barely out of their teens getting on podium in so many events even though this is probably their first intercontinental multi sport event for many of them. - particularly women! We should be celebrating how a 20-yr old kid like Vikas Thakur bravely hung on to win silver in Men's 85kg weightlifting despite back injury. Had the Kiwi missed his last lift Vikas would have won gold too.

[Singha]

AG has reached world class levels in many more areas primarily because Cheen launched a broad-spectrum dominance effort in many many areas where the goras were picking up medals on the cheap and closed down those scams!!
from white water rafting to yodelling, there are big efforts going on in cheen to make sure OG glory belongs to the Dragon.

hence no longer is the AG world class in select few areas onlee...it is world class wherever the beady eye of the Fire Dragon has fallen

[Murugan]

Where can I get Vinesh Phogats Fight with Rattigan?

[Suraj]

[Murugan]

Thanks suraj saar

[Suraj]

It's quite a match. Keep in mind that the girl Vinesh is just 19. She's barely old enough to vote, and she's already Commonwealth champion now. She took on the sister of a former Olympic medalist and European champion, who is herself a two time European championship medalist, and was trained through the still world leading post-Soviet wrestling system.

To those wondering about the drop in the medal count, I advise them to look at the ages of our medalists. We have multiple teenage gold medalists, others <25, and even more if you count silvers and bronzes. These kids account for probably half our medal tally. We sent a young team to gain experience, and they're doing very well. Malaika Goel, who fought her way to silver in 10m air pistol when Heena Sidhu (who is herself just 24) failed, is just 16 years old. A kid like that has 3-4 OGs worth of medal prospects ahead of her.

This is how the output of a working sports system looks like - a stream of capable youngsters who quickly adapt to the big stage and don't need years of 'exposure' to finally eke out an odd medal here or there.

[Singha]

do we have greco roman wrestling this time?
in 2010
3 gold in greco-roman
3 in archery
1 in table tennis
+ a lot more golds in shooting -> we got 14 golds in shooting.

[SwamyG]

While it is certainly heartening that young people are gaining exposure, visibility and medals. Sports at this level is really about countries strutting and showing each other their muscle power. Just because it is not on the lines of OG or AG, does not mean that India should just go along for the ride and think it is all kosher. Sports is war; and no harm in trying to influence the games that can be included.

[Suraj]

No Greco-Roman. No archery. No tennis. Several shooting events have been removed. I don't even know what they do in lawn bowls - it seems a group of people throw balls around on the grass and then they randomly pick 3 to give medals to.

There are several wrestling events left in the next 2 days that may yield multiple golds. We are running out of boxing hopes, because defending champion Manoj Kumar and Sumit Sangwan lost today. We'd be lucky to get 1-2 golds from there.

We may be able to medal in the remaining badminton and TT events.

There's a potential for gymnastics medals from Ashish Kumar, who won a silver and bronze last time, as well as bronze in the 2010 Asian Games, of all places; the Chinese and Korean tied for gold while Ashish got bronze. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnastics ... sian_Games

In athletics, I have no idea about our chances. The triple jumper Arpinder Kumar is a potential medal winner, as is Vikas Gowda in discus.

SwamyG: you can't bring in a new generation without giving them a chance. They're here on merit, because they outdid their senior compatriots. We had a point to prove in Delhi 2010, when we showed what we could achieve. With lowered government spending on sports since then, sports bodies chose to send the few who did best, not necessarily the ones who had most experience. The money has been spend well - we've more than half a dozen teenage medalists.

[Singha]

I am surprised archery is not there, since the english win OG medals at it and its a traditional sport there.

vikas gowda and krishna poonia should be able to medal in discus.not sure if krishna poonia is there this time.

we do not seem to have a powerful team in women's 4x400 anymore.....I guess jamaica & trinidad will dominate the shorter distances and kenya the longer ones. kenya may not have sent its A-list here though..atleast not the case in the marathon....2hr 11min 15sec time of the aussie was about 6 mins off the usual A-list crowd...around 1.5 miles off.

[Suraj]

We have a strong 4x400 team in AG level, not at CWG level, where the Afro/Caribbean brigade are monopolizing the running events. We used to have a strong 4x100 team too, but not anymore. If you check out the Indian athletics records though, many have been set in the last 3 years, particularly in the walk and field events. We're getting better in the strength events. The only truly ancient record now is Sriram Singh's legendary 800m run in Montreal 1976 OG. We did not send several A-list athletes like 20km racewalker Irfan Thodi, who finished 10th in London 2012 setting a national record.

Yes, the English love their archery since Agincourt, but the games are in Scotland, who at that time were more well known for lifting their kilts and mooning the English

[Supratik]

It is good they are moving the AG. It is very hard to expect the sports persons to deliver on two major back-to-back competitions. In boxing we lost a couple of potential gold medalists already.

[VikramS]

http://www.timescrest.com/sports/but-he ... mily--3043

About the girl's wrestling with boys...

[Singha]

>> The only truly ancient record now is Sriram Singh's legendary 800m run in Montreal 1976 OG.

there is another one. the equally legendary and more unknown late Shivnath Singh's 2:12 FM record set around 1978. in 76 OG he was also there (I posted a film) and finished around 2:16 to claim 11th position. with the levels of support in Govt such run events in india (apparently they provide only glasses of water), no wonder few outside services can try their luck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shivnath_Singh

we have ppl like Soji mathew and a few more who clock 1:05 in HM but still 5 min behind the topmost level. if such youngsters are given sustained high-alt training in places like ooty and leh from early teenage, we might get good traction on finally breaking that 2:12

[Singha]

also Hari Chand 1976 10k record stood for some 30+ yrs before being broken in 2008 iirc.

[Supratik]

We need athletics clubs in India who compete in professional meets like the IPL. Since we can't use the danda like China we need money and glory as a motivation.

[Ranjani Brow]

4 Indians in Wrestling Final:
-- Sakshi Malik makes final of Women's Freestyle 58kg after defeating Canada's Braxton Rie Stone 8-5
-- Lalita enters final in Women's Freestyle 53 kg after beating Shannon Hawke of Scotland
-- Bajarang reaches final of Men's Freestyle 61kg with 5-2 victory over Amas Daniel of Nigeria
-- Satywart Kadian moves into Men's Freestyle 97kg final after beating England's Leon Rattigan 8-4

[Supratik]

The competition is with Canada this year for third place. Two fights today are with Canadians. If they win it may be hard to overtake them.

[member_23658]

4 Indians in Wrestling Final:
-- Sakshi Malik makes final of Women's Freestyle 58kg after defeating Canada's Braxton Rie Stone 8-5
-- Lalita enters final in Women's Freestyle 53 kg after beating Shannon Hawke of Scotland
-- Bajarang reaches final of Men's Freestyle 61kg with 5-2 victory over Amas Daniel of Nigeria
-- Satywart Kadian moves into Men's Freestyle 97kg final after beating England's Leon Rattigan 8-4

only 3 hopes left now : Lalita settles for silver after losing to the Nigerian in finals

[Suraj]

Bajrang lost as well. Two more finalists left in wrestling today. Not good.

[SanjayC]

Does anybody know what's been done with the facilities in Delhi constructed for CWG ? I hope they're not laying waste.
The indoor shooting range was marvelous.

All flats in the sports village created for the event next to Akshardham Temple have been sold to the public. It is now among top Delhi locality, with flats going for crores of rupees. Our CEO lives there. Pays a rent of Rs 1 Lakh a month.