Indian Badminton Players at Tokyo Olympics

Sindhu has given us most of the medals. But removing other names will be unfair to them.

Even Saina has given us multiple medals - an Olympic bronze, a WC silver and a WC bronze

 

No man, Sindhu at her best will definitely beat TTY.
Like she did in Rio and last WC.

 

duplicate post deleted.

 

I want to say another thing about phones.
They are definitely a distraction and even an addiction sometimes.
Internet is ok, computer is ok, but social media and a always on phone can be a big distraction.
This time Gopi was not looking after Sindhu's game in the last few months, right?
Does that mean she had the phones?

I am saying this because Sindhu looked a little less focused this Olympics.
Only in the HBJ game I felt that she was fully focused from the start.


BTW, great news in hockey. Both men's and women's team are in semis.
India men used to dominate in hockey, but for 4 decades after the introduction of astro-turf , India fell behind.
It will be so great if they can win a medal.
And for women this is historic.
It will be also so great if they can win a medal.

 

I have noticed something - there tends to be some sync between the performances of Saina and Srikanth.
They either tend to win together, reach finals together or as it happened this time - they failed to qualify for Olympics together.
Great coincidence.

 

Sindhu interview and coach Park interview:

Coach told her - "there is a lot of difference between a bronze medal and fourth position" - and that hit her.


On a side note.
Today was more or less a good day for India in olympics.
One of our wrestlers are in finals, assuring a medal.
The two that lost can still win bronze.
In hockey also we lost, but 2 bronze medal prospects still alive.

Lovelina lost, but she already has a bronze.

Neeraj Chopra was impressive in javelin throw as he qualified for finals.
Aditi Ashok is at #2 position after day 1 in golf.
Both of them are medal prospects.

 

Why?
I thought Cheung said that we can discuss a little bit of other sports as long as there is enough badminton in the post.
Even my second last post had some hockey related comments - he didn't say anything.

 

Ya.
Sindhu looked a lot more determined during the bronze medal match.
Reminded me of her Rio matches.

 

Also, I think many of you guys are a little too harsh on Sai Praneeth.
The most disappointed with his losses must be he himself.

Sai, if you read BC and are reading this - please don't take all the criticism to heart.
Here, listen to this Indian Manipuri film industry song. This will console you:

 

ok, i guess my joke wasn't good.
(but I do think that we should not criticize our players so badly)


Anyway, I am going to predict something. I predict that the duo of Chirag/Satwik will win something big with the next 3-4 years.
Possibly a medal in WC within the next 2 years or so.
Especially with Boe around.

They were the only pair that beat the olympic champions.

And they only lost to #1 seed Indonesian pair who were very good on that day.

And on a side note again-
Today was a mixed day in Tokyo.
Very happy for hockey today. I hope this will rejuvenate hockey in India.
And I also hope women's team will also get the bronze.
Aditi also going well.
But wrestling was a big disappointment.

 

OK, Olympics medal events basically ended today. Tomorrow is closing ceremony.
Just for today, I request Cheung to allow us an extensive discussion on other olympic sports.
From tomorrow we will be back to mostly badminton.

I am very happy today and can hardly hold back. This was our best ever Olympics performance - in terms of number of medals, in terms of judging by priority of medal colours, in terms of ranking. Just thinking about a country of 1.3 billion unable to finish in top 50 is a bit embarrassing. But this time we managed to finish in top 50.(47, i think)

7 medals - 1 gold, 2 silver, 4 bronze.

And a GOLD medal at athletics! That was unthinkable!
In the morning I was disappointed with Aditi losing the medal from a very promising position. But after that Bajrang 8-0 bronze and Neeraj's gold in javelin more than made up for it.
Even without the Neeraj gold, we were at least as good as the London Olympics.

In London, we had:

6 medals - 2 silver, 4 bronze
In badminton 1 bronze
In wrestling 1 silver, 1 bronze
In boxing 1 bronze
In shooting 1 silver , 1 bronze


In Tokyo, not counting the gold, we have :

6 medals - 2 silver, 4 bronze
In badminton 1 bronze
In wrestling 1 silver, 1 bronze
In boxing 1 bronze
Instead of shooting we have 1 silver and 1 bronze in weightlifting and hockey respectively.

And the 7th medal, the gold, was just icing on the drink(or was it cake?)!

Come to think of it shooting was disappointment. I was confident that shooting and archery combined would give us at least one medal.

But the gold in athletics really made me happy.
First gold at individual event after Abhinav Bindra in 2008. Amazing!

 

Just one final remark regarding India at olympics -

If India can just improve its gold medal conversion rate it can do even better.
Iran also had 7 medals. But they were ranked #27 because they had 2 more gold in place of bronze.
Even if Sindhu's medal was gold we would be at #36.
Norway finished at #20 with only 8 medals.
8 medals isn't a big ask considering that our shooters under-performed and we were very close at some other sports.
So while I am very happy with India's performance this time, we can potentially finish in top 25 with a little more effort.
Hoping for the best.

OK, now back to badminton.

So what were you guys' biggest takeaways from Indian badminton in Tokyo Olympics?

And since Tokyo participation is over, I am already thinking about Paris.
Who do you guys think can make it in Paris? Because it's only 3 years from now, so I think whoever will make it to Paris - we probably have already heard their names by now.
May be I should prepare a new thread for Paris.