The Tokyo Olympic Games Thread

[rsingh]

UNBELIEVABLE
golf anf javelin - 5 years ago who would have thought we would be up hoping for medals there!!

Before bollywood races to a biopic for Neeraj Chopra, just wanted to say that he is better looking than a lot of Bollywood heros so you need to pick well. Just saying, because I can see the tired faces racing to make a movie.

Well said, I wish he stay away from machoism and bad company. We have lost few stars in Haryana. Stay away from Bollywood and flattering TV Shows and pay attention to the sports.

[Sanju]

We began with a Silver and ended with a Gold. I pray the trend continues onto Paris with many more Golds.

To every athlete in the Olympic squad, their coaches, support team, State/Central Orgs., GOI and especially their families our gratitude and thanks. _/\_

[Suraj]

Congratulations to Neeraj Chopra !

Easily the greatest ever athlete produced by India and that was before the Olympics . No Indian has ever been the junior world record holder, junior world champ, Asian champ, AG and CWG champ all at once before . And now he adds OG champ to it .

Elite of the elite even by world standards. This boy has done what I’d hoped of him back when I saw him destroy the junior world in 2016.

[Santosh]

Any more medal hopefuls or are we done at 7?

[AshishA]

We are done at 7

[Suraj]

Yep we are done with 1G 2S 4B . Best ever in total medals overtaking 2S 4B in London and 1G 2B in 2008.

Far less than hoped for, given the pre event projections by the medal projection sites involved multiple shooting golds. But it’s a start, and the wins were incredibly heartwarming to encourage more people:
Men’s hockey reviving the dream
Women’s hockey inspiring the country
India waking up at 5 and asking about golf rules
And finally Neeraj’s legendary performance.

A lot of amazing takeaways from the Games, far more so than any prior one.

[Santosh]

Who were shooting hopefuls other than Manu Bhaker? Her's was a big disappointment with no fault of her. Support team had no clue what to do in adverse situation.

[Vamsee]

In Olympics,
5 Golds will put you in top 20
10 Golds will put you in top 10
20 Golds will put you in top 5

For Paris Olympics our target should be 5 Golds. It is not impossible if Shooting & Wrestling athletes perform up to their potential.

--Vamsee

[Suraj]

In Olympics,
5 Golds will put you in top 20
10 Golds will put you in top 10
20 Golds will put you in top 5

For Paris Olympics our target should be 5 Golds. It is not impossible if Shooting & Wrestling athletes perform up to their potential.

--Vamsee

We had an outside chance of hitting that had the Olympics been in 2020, given how strong the shooting contingent's form was then. But it really is possible if we perform to potential in shooting (2-3 golds) and wrestling (~2 golds).

[Suraj]

Brief Summary

Shooting
Needs: 2 world class shooters in every discipline being targeted
Current: almost there in every category, especially 10m mens and womens air pistol and 10m womens air rifle. To a lesser extent 10m mens air rifle and 50m air rifle. Only one strong performer in 25m pistol womens, no strong men after Vijay Kumar's silver in London 2012. NRAI did an excellent job until about mid 2020, but Covid time has caused their carefully crafted Olympic plans to completely fall apart. No major changes - continue exactly what they did between 2017-2020 which is to run a hypercompetitive domestic trials system and send the best no matter how young, to compete relentlessly on world circuit.

Wrestling
Needs: competitive world level wrestlers in every freestyle category (mens and womens) at least, if not some class Greco-Roman ones.
Current: weak in men's, very weak in womens. We are struggling to bridge the gap between Asian and world level. We have 3 men (Bajrang, Ravi Kumar and Deepak Punia) and one woman (Vinesh) who can all win at the world level but only on a good day. They need to improve that to a level where they consistently finish 1st or 2nd at world level. The Russians have continuously nurtured their Caucasian wrestling strength for decades, depending on Ossetians (e.g. Arsen Fadzaev and Dagestanis (e.g. Zaur Uguev who beat Ravi Kumar in the final).

Weightlifting
Needs: World class lifters in at least low-mid weight classes in womens, and also mens
Current: Only Mirabai is anywhere near world class. Jeremy Lalrinnunga is getting there and at 18 he already holds the senior national records. Needs very careful management to medal in Paris. Clearly the Northeast has a lot of potential to offer here. Perhaps an apex weightlifting development center located in Manipur ?

Hockey
Needs: Continue exactly what they're doing now, just more of it
Current: Miracle performance - seeing hockey teams perform at OG brings Dhyan Chand's words alive to every Indian. For India to be inspired by sport, it's clear it needs hockey teams to be strong. Something I learned in these games. I thought we could leave hockey to wither and focus elsewhere, but there is an emotional connect between India and field hockey. Both men and women hugely exceeded expectations. The men finally performed like they should. The women shocked the world. Both were incredibly fit and hard runners - the improvement in the women being especially dramatic. Both were halted at or far above their justifiable positions - men by possibly the strongest ever team seen in modern hockey (Belgium, who went on to win gold) and women who beat Australia and almost reeled in defending champions GBR.

Winning at Olympics is NOT the same as focusing on sporting success. To maximize Olympic performance, we need to focus on some sports where the amount of effort needed to podium is short. Hockey is poor for this for example - almost 20 people, 7-8 hrs of play, all for one medal. Weightling/wrestling are better - much shorter but only one medal per athlete. But the effort level is quick and optimized - weightlifting in particular is 6 lifts maximum. Wrestling is a 6 minute match each. Shooting, swimming, fencing, sailing/canoeing/rowing all can generate multiple medals from one athlete. We need focus on the latter if we want more medals.

[chetak]

जीता सोना है पर लड़का हीरा है

[Shwetank]

Why leave out archery? One of the few other sports where performance has been at world class level. As I said, if Deepika had been in other bracket where she didn't meet the Korean gold winner, she would taken silver. Her and Atanu can also medal in mixed if performing well.

Also for sports where raw strength/power matters more, doping is very common. Swimming which you mention is a prime example, China wins medals but is still under the cloud of doping, Sun Yang their superstart swimmer was actually barred from these olympics. Regardless of whether they test positive, it is unlikely the Chinese or other countries will stop doping. So to be competitive, are we willing to put our athletes through that?

[vijayk]

https://kheloindia.gov.in/about

The Khelo India programme has been introduced to revive the sports culture in India at the grass-root level by building a strong framework for all sports played in our country and establish India as a great sporting nation.

[vijayk]

Turns our Neeaj Chopraji is also an admirer of Modiji ...

[Suraj]

Why leave out archery? One of the few other sports where performance has been at world class level. As I said, if Deepika had been in other bracket where she didn't meet the Korean gold winner, she would taken silver. Her and Atanu can also medal in mixed if performing well.

Also for sports where raw strength/power matters more, doping is very common. Swimming which you mention is a prime example, China wins medals but is still under the cloud of doping, Sun Yang their superstart swimmer was actually barred from these olympics. Regardless of whether they test positive, it is unlikely the Chinese or other countries will stop doping. So to be competitive, are we willing to put our athletes through that?

Fair enough. Archery was an outside medal hope, but realistically not possible without bridging the gap from the Koreans especially in the team events. Archery can earn only a single medal individually - all others are team events and thus needs both depth and bench strength.

For a contrarian argument about swimming I will never get tired of bringing up the Japanese. They have a legendary record in swimming at Olympics: Japan in OG Swimming, along with wrestling. Far back in the 1930s, they swept OG swimming - Swimming in 1932 Olympics. They are very serious about teaching swimming - I learned swimming due to my wife's persistence demanding that I learn, since she learned as a kid and sees it as a life-saving skill. I can swim now but just freestyle, while she can easily do all strokes strongly. The Japanese aren't physically comparable to westerners (or even doped Chinese) and yet beat them regularly in swimming.

Strength events need early nutritional intervention and HGH supplements followed by channeling the most promising kids into the right disciplines.

[chetak]

and the woke SM reactions to chopra

[chetak]

Indian cricket team right now

[arshyam]

Brief Summary

Thanks for the extensive summary. For someone who does not follow athletics much, this is a good read to understand where we are. A couple of questions:

1. What are your thoughts about cycling? IIRC, we have some promising juniors who might peak at 2024 (I think it was your post only that mentioned it), and there are five different forms of cycling in the games.
2. How do badminton and table tennis look for us?
3. Also, a bit more strategically, how can we enhance the list with sports we are good at? Looking at the list of sports in the OG website, there are quite a few contenders that are anything but worldwide, but yield a bunch of medals to the few countries that do well in them, mostly bhestern. For example, two types of basketball, volleyball and beach volleyball, baseball , three forms of gymnastics, five forms of cycling, two canoeing, skateboarding (double ), sport climbing (whatever that is), etc. The list continues, actually. So why not try to get some of our strong suites in: chess, kabaddi, polo, billiards (?) and of course, cricket? If baseball is an Olympic-level sport, surely cricket (T-20, given time constraints) should be a shoo-in? What would it take to do this?

Eventually, I'd like to get the traditional Indian wrestling (why follow Graeco-Roman for a sport that originated here?) and martial arts to be included, but we need to do the ground work for that first with a proper organization and domestic leagues, and get that included in CWG or Asiad first.

Other sports we could encourage are rock climbing, mountaineering, freestyle climbing (mountain climbing that does not need technical equipment, etc.). While these may be difficult to include in these events, they can help in generating a sporting culture beyond the few bright spots we have. We do have the tallest mountains in the world, and a lot of naturally acclimatized people who could do well with the right training and focus.

Others may have better ideas than mine , but I hope my point is clear: we need to shape things to our advantage wherever possible. And stop being followers.

[AshishA]

^^ I agree with this. We can increase the number of sports we compete at top level. In 2024, there is a new sport coming called breaking (I think its a dance). If these sports can be a part of the Olympics then why not chess, kabaddi and cricket.

[Suraj]

I’m not a fan of focusing on large team sports. It takes a lot of investment to do that and he reward is just one medal. The cost benefit is just too low. Even the Chinese really only focus on women’s volleyball where they are a world power. Ditto for Japan. For us it’s field hockey.

There are lot of medal rich sports with far better cost benefit ratio. First the multiple medal potential ones:
Swimming (free, breast, back, butterfly) . Build a team of specialists in each stroke - wins medals in each event over different distances (50, 100, 200 for all, 400, 800 and 1500 for freestyle). Also let’s you create an IM medley team. If you’re really lucky you get an all rounder like Phelps. Our swimming is getting good to the point where NRs are broken often but we are still far from AG standard. Swimming is highly technical - something you learn the hard way trying to improve. Needs extremely strong coaching base.
Diving: takes extreme athleticism and again requires strong coaching base and rigorous training.
Fencing (epee, foil, sabre) . Bharani Devi is amazing but she’s a freak of nature with no system otherwise.
Cycling (pursuit,sprint, scratch, points, keirin, madison, omnium) . Our youngsters are the junior men’s team sprint world champions and Esow Alben almost won individual pursuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_UCI_ ... mpionships. Our juniors will probably be a medal capable group in 2024 - Esow especially.
Gymnastics: so many equipments. Find some kids who can excel at one or two and ensure they can medal in AG - that’s already world standard.
Rowing/canoeing/kayaking : all events where we are getting better but could be significantly accelerated.
Shooting: we already have done plenty here, needs better mental conditioning.
Sparring sports: boxing, judo, taekwondo, karate . Doable with investment, especially armed forces driven. Wrestling is a special case with an already rich history outside of army.

If the goal is to pad the numbers the logic is straightforward- focus on a few sports where there’s enough raw ability, spend a lot of effort understanding how to coach them to world stand and have enough options in different styles/weight classes to ensure medals. Team sports don’t matter to me here at all, except hockey for historical reasons.

TT we will not get into medal territory for the foreseeable future. Badminton we don’t have enough bench strength. There seems to be a lull between another gen of badminton talent coming out of Gooichand/Padukone academies.

[IndraD]

congratulations to you also suraj saar
u brought him to our attention long back
ur tweets explain why East Europeans maintain dominance in javeline throw
no wonder Neeraj was sent to Poland for training.

[SBajwa]

Brief Summary

Shooting
Needs: 2 world class shooters in every discipline being targeted

Needs: competitive world level wrestlers in every freestyle category (mens and womens) at least, if not some class Greco-Roman ones.

Weightlifting
Needs: World class lifters in at least low-mid weight classes in womens, and also mens


Hockey
Needs: Continue exactly what they're doing now, just more of it


Winning at Olympics is NOT the same as focusing on sporting success. To maximize Olympic performance, we need to focus on some sports where the amount of effort needed to podium is short. Hockey is poor for this for example - almost 20 people, 7-8 hrs of play, all for one medal. Weightling/wrestling are better - much shorter but only one medal per athlete. But the effort level is quick and optimized - weightlifting in particular is 6 lifts maximum. Wrestling is a 6 minute match each. Shooting, swimming, fencing, sailing/canoeing/rowing all can generate multiple medals from one athlete. We need focus on the latter if we want more medals.

Thank you Suraj.

[AshishA]

In athletics, how did the Italians grab 5 gold medals? Last time they had 0 medals in athletics. We really need to see how the other countries are improving and implement some of that here.

[Suresh S]

One reason goras get so many medals is politics and control of all olympic administrative bodies . watch the rhythmic gymnastic gold medal competition . Russian girl Dina Averina clearly wins it but gold is given to israeli girl linoy ashram. Judges are just crooks nothing else. I challenge you to see this performence and judge for yourself who won the competition.

They changed the rules in field hockey decades ago to suit their style and India started loosing after that. They have so many medals for swimming that these western powers dominate . The judges are crooks put in place by these people.

The whole tamasha to keep Russia out on trumped up charges of taking banned substances is just that dirty politics by USA. All this charade about rule of law and human rights is a bag of bulls---.

When I was growing up this hizzoner sebastian coe was a gold medal winner in 1500 meters in olympics . the chut-- is from britshit country. This guy became a bigshot at WADA the drug checking olympic body which is completely dominated by americans and britshit and other western powers. This woman simon biles and that "woman" tennis player serena williams both have taken steroids and amphetamines on multiple occassions for "medical " reasons. This was exposed by russian hackers who hacked into the WADA computers. But of course the international media dominated by western powers will not mention this. Now all this is present officially what to say of things happenning unofficially. This world is full of it.

[AshishA]

^But they won't utter a single word against China. I find it highly ridiculous that China won't do state sponsored doping while Russia will. Everytime China comes up, they will behave like the Gandhi's 3 monkeys.

[Suresh S]

three trillion dollars in the bank built on the backs of sweat shops run by CPC in the so called free chinese corporations works like a charm when used in the right places

[sudarshan]

... Russian girl Dina Averina clearly wins it but gold is given to israeli girl linoy ashram. Judges are just crooks nothing else. I challenge you to see this performence and judge for yourself who won the competition.
...

How and where can I see the performance? It seems due to "copyright" issues, these videos are not available online. The ones which are available show 10 secs of each performance, and then focus on the hugging and crying upon announcement of results.

I gathered from reading about it, that the Israeli girl dropped her ribbon, and was still awarded gold. But now it seems the videos of the actual performances are being carefully kept out of places like YT or DailyMotion.

[rsingh]

Just now I took a call which was not welcomed and I am disturbed about it. It about our ancestral property in India and I am kind of immotional about it. My wife knows this. She took the phone and threatened me that she will throw this in the pond nearby, if I took call from this person again. Pond is 100m from my house. I was in olympic Gold mood. I gave her the phone and asked her throw it. Any way I think just before a boxing fight trainer has to tell the boxer that his GF was seen with his best friend. Then result would be different.

[Aldonkar]

One reason goras get so many medals is politics and control of all olympic administrative bodies . watch the rhythmic gymnastic gold medal competition . Russian girl Dina Averina clearly wins it but gold is given to israeli girl linoy ashram. Judges are just crooks nothing else. I challenge you to see this performence and judge for yourself who won the competition.

They changed the rules in field hockey decades ago to suit their style and India started loosing after that. They have so many medals for swimming that these western powers dominate . The judges are crooks put in place by these people.

The whole tamasha to keep Russia out on trumped up charges of taking banned substances is just that dirty politics by USA. All this charade about rule of law and human rights is a bag of bulls---.

When I was growing up this hizzoner sebastian coe was a gold medal winner in 1500 meters in olympics . the chut-- is from britshit country. This guy became a bigshot at WADA the drug checking olympic body which is completely dominated by americans and britshit and other western powers. This woman simon biles and that "woman" tennis player serena williams both have taken steroids and amphetamines on multiple occassions for "medical " reasons. This was exposed by russian hackers who hacked into the WADA computers. But of course the international media dominated by western powers will not mention this. Now all this is present officially what to say of things happenning unofficially. This world is full of it.

I used to play hockey when I first arrived in the UK from Kenya some fifty years ago. I was not very good and the facilities were public grass covered fields. Hockey in the UK is a winter sport and it was brutal playing on bumpy grass at sub 5 deg C. In Kenya we had played mostly on "murram" pitches, a kind of clay which was relatively flat.

I gave up hockey soon after and did not see international games for many years. I was shocked when I returned to it as a spectator. As you say the rules had completely changed to suit the European teams. Not only the playing surface but also the rules regarding "obstruction", "turning" and "dangerous play". Also the rule of not raising your stick above shoulder height. No wonder that India and Pakistan, who would both tour Kenya as part of their Olympic preparation, were no longer medal contenders. There could not be many pitches in India that met the new rules.

Separately, I note your comments about Sebastian Coe, who was in his day a Olympic and world champion at middle distance running. I suppose you are probably not aware that he is part Indian, having a Indian grandmother.

[Suraj]

congratulations to you also suraj saar
u brought him to our attention long back
ur tweets explain why East Europeans maintain dominance in javeline throw
no wonder Neeraj was sent to Poland for training.

Thanks Turned out to be very popular indeed, evem RTed by ministers like Rajeev Chandrasekhar: https://twitter.com/surajbrf/status/142 ... 78051?s=21

[SBajwa]

There is no offside rule in hockey anymore. That was biggest shock to me. Hockey use to be similar as per soccer (football) rules except for the D (including surface, etc). Astruturf hockey is totally different from the grass hockey. There is 3-4 types of hockey in western world

1. Ice hockey
2. Astroturf Field Hockey
3. street hockey (without skates and with ball but stick is same as ice hockey).
4. 5-sides hockey (smaller ground with 5 players on each side) (don't know the rules, etc)

etc.

I think Grass field hockey could be made into a total separate sports from above with separate tournaments, etc.

[Venky]

Good summary on how we should go forward. Gymnastics is one more event where we can make a mark. In team sports hope more states take a lead from Odisha.


[quote="Suraj"]Brief Summary

Shooting
Needs: 2 world class shooters in every discipline being targeted
Current: almost there in every category, especially 10m mens and womens air pistol and 10m womens air rifle. To a lesser extent 10m mens air rifle and 50m air rifle. Only one strong performer in 25m pistol womens, no strong men after Vijay Kumar's silver in London 2012. NRAI did an excellent job until about mid 2020, but Covid time has caused their carefully crafted Olympic plans to completely fall apart. No major changes - continue exactly what they did between 2017-2020 which is to run a hypercompetitive domestic trials system and send the best no matter how young, to compete relentlessly on world circuit.

Wrestling
Needs: competitive world level wrestlers in every freestyle category (mens and womens) at least, if not some class Greco-Roman ones.
Current: weak in men's, very weak in womens. We are struggling to bridge the gap between Asian and world level. We have 3 men (Bajrang, Ravi Kumar and Deepak Punia) and one woman (Vinesh) who can all win at the world level but only on a good day. They need to improve that to a level where they consistently finish 1st or 2nd at world level. The Russians have continuously nurtured their Caucasian wrestling strength for decades, depending on Ossetians (e.g. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsen_Fadzaev]Arsen Fadzaev[/url] and Dagestanis (e.g. Zaur Uguev who beat Ravi Kumar in the final).

Weightlifting
Needs: World class lifters in at least low-mid weight classes in womens, and also mens
Current: Only Mirabai is anywhere near world class. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Lalrinnunga]Jeremy Lalrinnunga[/url] is getting there and at 18 he already holds the senior national records. Needs very careful management to medal in Paris. Clearly the Northeast has a lot of potential to offer here. Perhaps an apex weightlifting development center located in Manipur ?

Hockey
Needs: Continue exactly what they're doing now, just more of it
Current: Miracle performance - seeing hockey teams perform at OG brings Dhyan Chand's words alive to every Indian. For India to be inspired by sport, it's clear it needs hockey teams to be strong. Something I learned in these games. I thought we could leave hockey to wither and focus elsewhere, but there is an emotional connect between India and field hockey. Both men and women hugely exceeded expectations. The men finally performed like they should. The women shocked the world. Both were incredibly fit and hard runners - the improvement in the women being especially dramatic. Both were halted at or far above their justifiable positions - men by possibly the strongest ever team seen in modern hockey (Belgium, who went on to win gold) and women who beat Australia and almost reeled in defending champions GBR.

Winning at Olympics is NOT the same as focusing on sporting success. To maximize Olympic performance, we need to focus on some sports where the amount of effort needed to podium is short. Hockey is poor for this for example - almost 20 people, 7-8 hrs of play, all for one medal. Weightling/wrestling are better - much shorter but only one medal per athlete. But the effort level is quick and optimized - weightlifting in particular is 6 lifts maximum. Wrestling is a 6 minute match each. Shooting, swimming, fencing, sailing/canoeing/rowing all can generate multiple medals from one athlete. We need focus on the latter if we want more medals.[/quote]

[Aldonkar]

There is no offside rule in hockey anymore. That was biggest shock to me. Hockey use to be similar as per soccer (football) rules except for the D (including surface, etc). Astruturf hockey is totally different from the grass hockey. There is 3-4 types of hockey in western world

1. Ice hockey
2. Astroturf Field Hockey
3. street hockey (without skates and with ball but stick is same as ice hockey).
4. 5-sides hockey (smaller ground with 5 players on each side) (don't know the rules, etc)

etc.

I think Grass field hockey could be made into a total separate sports from above with separate tournaments, etc.

Yes I forgot the change of offside; today the European (and Aus/NZ) teams always leave a man forward near to the opponents goalline. This suits the "long passing" games that the Europeans favour. They also changed the rules on subs and brought in a lot of things such as green, yellow and red cards.

Ice hockey is a totally different game and evolved in the cold Northern countries. It has only six players on the rink at one time. Street hockey seems to be a version of Ice Hockey without ice, with roller blades.

5 a side hockey is played indoors, as is 5 a side football. Rugby Union (which normally has 15 players) is very popular among the middle classes in the GB and Ireland as well as Aus, NZ and South Africa and France, has also developed a version of Sevens Rugby which featured in this Olympics. The gold was won by Fiji who beat NZ. Japan also plays Rugby and I suspect it will feature in Paris 2024.

[Suraj]

Going down the rabbithole of 'goras screwing things' is a waste of time. What is the goal ? To find ways to succeed or to find reasons for past failure ? I say past, because these OGs showed India can fight on the big stage across many sports like no prior Olympics has shown before:

1. Neeraj's gold - an overwhelming win in a throwing event where no Asian man has even won a medal before. In fact Asian men have won a combined 4 Olympic medals across all four throwing sports (shot put, discus, javelin, hammer). No Asian has ever medaled in shot, only one each in discus and hammer (and the hammer winner Koji Murofushi was the son of a 5x Asiad winner and a white woman - basically a genetic freak of nature) and Neeraj is the first ever Asian javelin medalist. For long it has been the 'rule' that throwing will be dominated by monster Europeans, sprints by west Africans, distance by east Africans and Asians can nibble around the edges (e.g. women's and distance running).

2. Bajrang crushing a multiple world medalist 8-0 with an injured knee.

3. Ravi Kumar looking despondent and unhappy with silver. He struggled to make weight over 2 days and slogged hard overnight before his final, which tired him out.

4. Lovlina's inspiring bronze

5. Aditi Ashok who had Covid in May during 2nd wave, getting golf 4th place despite world #200 rank, and despite her driving power dropping significantly due to illness

6. Half the women's hockey team also had Covid and yet were among the fittest teams in the fray. Ditto for the men's performance. Both these teams walk with their heads high. Only what was probably the strongest men's team in the history of modern hockey could stop India. The women of course, scripted a fairytale, beating Aus, fighting back against Arg and GBR and losing by a solitary goal in each case. These girls stand a head shorter than their powerful white opponents.

In the past, Olympics meant everyone underperformed and we read a litany of excuses with a tired knowing nod. This is the first Olympics after which people are extremely excited for the future, or maybe the 2nd after Beijing 2008.

[saip]

CNN while reporting about Neeraj Chopra's gold medal could just find ONE person in all of India to quote - Ms Vadra. Amazing.

[Suresh S]

Goras screwing us is absolutely not a rabbit hole. I agree with your analysis as to how india can maximize it,s medals tally. I am all for it. but having had the experience of both competing in multiple sports and medicine My life,s experience tells me otherwise. Work very hard no short cuts to real success but work smart. we must strive to make it a level playing field as our sanskar teaches us. I absolutely and categorically abhorr cheating in any field in life but we must not let the bad boys do it to us by cheating and than screaming from top of the house how bad we are.

Yes absolutely training, facility are extremely important and we must do all of the things which are well known . I am very proud of India,s achievemnets in this olympics. But total stranglehold of western powers in international sporting bodies must be broken. Cheating and hypocracy and taking advantage is in thier blood this must be corrected and not just in sports.

people getting 99th percentile have to change their speciality and go into unwanted specialities
but people getting 2nd percentile graduating .And how many times i saw this ? too many times that is why these comments.

I want India to take the lead in this century to correct the discourse in International behaviour and not just in sports.

[Suraj]

There are lots of other non-gora countries doing well in their niches find ways to win. You want to sit around complaining about goras, knock yourself out. Meanwhile Taiwan, Indonesia and even Philippines found ways to win golds. India's only gold is in a sport dominated by the most TFTA of goras - one that no scrawny Asian has ever come close to medaling in before. And even Neeraj is scrawny for his event - at 5'10 or 11, he's way shorter and lighter than the average 6'2-6'5" European winners of the past.

This is just an Olympics thread, it'll be locked soon, probably after the Paralympics.

[disha]

Also posters must not forget that India created Asian record in the Men's 4x400 relay team. Some more effort, maybe able to shave 1s off and they will be in finals. A little more effort, may be 1.5 seconds, and they would be knocking bronze.

https://thebridge.in/athletics/tokyo-ol ... elay-24229

[Primus]

Desho mein desh Haryana.
Wah bete jama lath gad diya.
Haryana sabse age. Mein khus Hua.
Haryana ka chora.

Wa doosra Chhora Bajrang Puniya mhare gaam ka sai. Uska Baap Balwan mere Baba ne jaane tha. Main bhi bhot khus hua. Kasam te lath gaad diya ji.

[Mort Walker]

There are lots of other non-gora countries doing well in their niches find ways to win. You want to sit around complaining about goras, knock yourself out. Meanwhile Taiwan, Indonesia and even Philippines found ways to win golds. India's only gold is in a sport dominated by the most TFTA of goras - one that no scrawny Asian has ever come close to medaling in before. And even Neeraj is scrawny for his event - at 5'10 or 11, he's way shorter and lighter than the average 6'2-6'5" European winners of the past.

This is just an Olympics thread, it'll be locked soon, probably after the Paralympics.

Hoping for a new thread in 6 months for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in Feb. 2022. Hopefully we don't have some sort of COVID-21 from an escaped-released pangolin making it to a Chinese wet meat market!