Life Etc Etc

In my previous blog we arrived at a ratio  (Total no. of medals won at the Asian Games) / (Total no. of medals won at Olympics)   which correlated the performance of the Asian games with the Olympics that occurred in the same four year cycle.  We did find out that India's ratio of 17.83  was at the bottom of the list  (remember a lower ratio points to a greater ability to reproduce one's Asian Games performance on the Olympic stage)  when we considered the top ranking nations at Asian Games.  But one question remained unanswered, was this the greatest disparity between Asian Games and Olympics as far as India was concerned? I dove straight into the medal tallies from the previous century to dig up the answer to my question.  The graph brought about several interesting observations: Until 2008 Olympics, India's performance at the 1952 Helsinki games (with 2 medals) was its best ever. Sadly, India delivered what would be its finest medal tally (unt...

From the pinnacle of Asian Games, Olympics was a steep fall for India. That set me thinking as to how many more countries found the going tough on the world stage after excelling at the Asian games. For my initial analysis, I took the top 15 countries at Asian Games and mapped out their corresponding ranking at Olympics. As expected, India's Olympic ranking of 71 was third worst behind Malaysia and Qatar. But rankings are not always a great measure to assess how well a country did at a multisport event where a country with a single gold medal outranks another with multiple medals on the account of that country not winning a gold medal. So, in order to have an equitable comparison, I mapped out the number of medals each country won at the Olympics and Asian Games side by side.   This time India narrowly avoided the lower third of the graph which contained countries such as Hong Kong, Indonesia and Bahrain that were placed higher over India in the Olympic rankings. Like rankin...

When Asian Games concluded in October 2023, with the Indian athletics contingent winning a whopping 29 medals , there was hope that in 10 months time we would be putting up our strongest performance ever in Olympics 2024. That, unfortunately remained an unfulfilled dream. Apart from Neeraj Chopra, Avinash Sable and the men's relay team to some extent there was no fight offered by any of our athletes which made them look like serious medal contenders. So, where did it all go wrong? Annu Rani at Paris Olympics <Courtesy: Olympics > I pointed this out in a tweet of mine but I believe a majority of our athletes peaked for the Asian Games with almost everything going downhill from there either due to lack of prep, focus or injuries.  Harmilan Bains, Ancy Sojan Edappilly, Tajinderpal Singh Toor and Kishore Jena all suffered injuries post Asian Games with Harmilan and Ancy missing out on Olympic qualification Jyothi Yarraji was posting a string of sub 13 second times prior to her in...

If winning an Olympic medal is the toughest thing that a sportsperson can achieve in their life then qualifying for the Olympics should be right up there for a country like India which until a decade ago didn't have a proper ecosystem to develop athletes at the grassroot level. It's already been a week since the Olympics has started but before we talk about the Olympians, let's take a look at the heroes who made a place in our heart even after missing out on qualification. Tejas Shirse : If there was an award for the most improved athlete of the year then it must go to Tejas who broke the 100m hurdles national record in his pursuit of Olympic glory. His yearning to excel took him to Europe where he produced a series of podium finishes as he collected ranking points which put him within touching distance of his dream. If only he started his season a bit earlier, we could have seen Tejas' penchant for excellence burn brighter on the Olympics stage but if not this one he...

Before the Rio Olympics began there was an intense debate about whether the sport of wrestling should be dropped from Olympics altogether. I believe that debate has been put to rest once and for all with the extremely intense and nerve wrangling bouts that were on display at the Olympics. Today we will look at five nail biters from the Rio Olympics which will prove that wrestling without an iota of doubt is as interesting as any other sport.  Sakshi Malik V/S   Aisuluu Tynybekova :   Everyone in India knows about this  match. Sakshi was trailing the Asian Champion from Kyrgyzstan 5-0 until the 4th minute when she executed two consecutive take downs to bring the score to 5-4. With 10 seconds left on the Clock Sakshi leveled the score by pushing Tynybekova out of the competition circle. That move tied the scores but even a tie couldn't help Sakshi's fortunes because i n the event of a tie the contestant with the least number of penalties would be adju...