The week that was in Indian Olympic sports by Nitin Sanker
Wow it has been a spectacular 3 days at the para asian games , I have really loved seeing great Indian para athletes like the truly spectacular Sumit Antil and the powerful Sundar singh in javelin categories who broke world records here.
I have had my mind blown by the unlikely feats of the paraplegic prachi Yadav and her husband manish kaurav who won a gold , silver and bronze between them in a sport we have never medalled in before – canoeing. Also time to see familiar faces like Avani Lekhara – the shooter who won gold again and new heroes like kapil parmar who won our first medal in para judo
So how are we doing, we can compare India’s performance here with our best ever performance in 2018 where we had a 15-24-33 medal performance with a total of 72 medals to get a sense of how well we did
Halfway through the 4th para asian ( 3 days out of six) we can see our para sportspeople are doing India very proud, we stand at 15-20-28 at the end of day 3. And we have a total of 63 medals. We stand at 6th place see table below.
sau ke uss parr – we will easily cross hundred this time , possibly even 150 as per my calculations so I can see just woooww , woooow the para atheletes are going well past what our atheletes did this time , spectacular feat. Something which should make our Indian people proud
Medal table placing – remember here it is golds that matter , also our golds versus gold medals of other countries .
quick context there are two sports athletics(150+) and swimming( around 100 ) which have the maximum medals and weightage clearly, these sports are also spaced throughout the 6 days, then we have sports like table tennis (37) , cycling (30) , lawn bowls (24), chess ( 24), badminton (22), powerlifting (20 ). These do have high importance in terms of total but depending on schedule may push a nation ahead with a spurt of medals on certain days.
We are doing very very well in athletics (13-13-11)- 2nd overall after china and just a couple of other precious gold medals in Shooting and canoeing whose schedule is virtually over.
But athletics is still just half way through, so a huge haul of further gold medals here is expected by India , we can also expect a good number of gold medals in badminton and chess ( in these sports we did get 6 gold medals in 2018 ) whose medal matches will happen over the next couple of days. So I think we can easily cross a count of 30 golds and even more depending on how well we do in badminton and chess.
I personally think china , japan ( who have a strong swimming, table tennis cycling and a reasonable atheletics programs), Iran ( who are doing well in both athletics – head to head to head with india and a good swimming program ) , they are well beyond India.
But Uzbeks have had a big spurt ( 6 golds ) in canoeing which is over now and while their atheletes are doing well , I think India can overhaul them ,
Thailand is also doing well in athletics but at a lower rate then India, they are having a spurt of medals in lawn bowls which is half way through its schedule. But I feel we can maybe just maybe edge past them.
Most shocking and sad ( not for me though ) is the poor performance of korea , I did not believe we could do better than Korea ( this would be a first in Asian games in last 50 years or so) when the games started ( korea had 50+ gold medals last time. But, korea are doing poorly in both athletics and swimming , they have got their medals through table tennis and lawn bowls but both the sports are half through their cycle and I do not see them overtaking us overall.
So looks like we can finish in positions *4-5-6. But the unbelievable 4th place just possible once again. I think though a 5th place is more likely with one of Uzbek, Korea or Thailand finishing ahead of us.
Guys let us cheer the men and women in blue as once again Hangzhou is turning out to be a magical venue for us. ( by the way fancode app is the best place to see these games with dd sports showing some events)