Tag: tokyo2020olympics

TOKYO OLYMPICS (2020) AND INDIA’S TOP MEDAL CONTENDERS

The 2020 summer Olympics officially the Games of XXXII Olympiad unbranded as Tokyo 2020. Tokyo 2020 is an international multi sport event being held from 23 July to 28 August 2021 in Tokyo Japan with some preliminary events that begin on 21 July.

POSTPONED TO 2021:

During the 125th IOC session  in Buenos Aires held at Argentina, on September 7, 2013 TOKYO was selected as a host city to conduct 2020 Olympics. The actual date to conduct the Olympics was from 24th July to 9th August 2020. But due to Covid -19 pandemic the event was postponed to 2021 and now happening in Tokyo. This is the first time the Olympics games had been rescheduled. The name of the event remains the same Tokyo 2020 because of marketing and branding purpose. The event is been held with all safety measures behind the closed doors, without any public spectators. The Summer Paralympics will be held between 24 August and 5 September 2021.

The 2020 Games are the fourth Olympic Games to be held in Japan, following the Tokyo 1964 (Summer), Sapporo 1972 (Winter), and Nagano 1998 (Winter) games.[c] Tokyo is the first city in Asia to hold the Summer Games twice. The 2020 Games are the second of three consecutive Olympics to be held in East Asia, following the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and preceding the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.

NEW GAMES:

This 2020 olympics introduces new games. Those games were once held but subsequently removed.  New games are 3×3 basketball, freestyle BMX (bicycle Motocross), Madison cycling (relay race). New IOC policies also allow the host organizing committee that is Japanese Olympic Committee to add new sports. The games are baseball and softball. The olympic debuts are karate, sport climbing, surfing and skateboarding.

Bermuda and the Philippines won their first ever olympic gold medals. San-Marino and Turkmenistan won their first ever olympic medals.

INDIA’S TOP MEDAL CONTENDERS:

India is sending its largest ever contingent to the Tokyo Olympics. The nation has the great hope of bettering its medals hauls this time over previous Games. With 122 athletes competing in 13 events across 85 events, the country hopes to win medals for shooting, wrestling, boxing, archery and badminton.

In 2016 Rio Olympics, India returned with two medals. A silver for ace shuttler PV Sindhu in the Women’s Singles Badminton and a bronze for wrestler Sakshi Malik in the Women’s 58kg Freestyle Wrestling Event.

  • 2016 Rio Olympics: 1 Silver, 1 Bronze
  • 2012 London Olympics: 2 Silver, 4 Bronze
  • 2008 Beijing Olympics: 1 Gold, 2 Bronze

India has won a total of 28 medals since 1900 – 11 from hockey, five from wrestling, four from shooting, two each in badminton, boxing and athletics, and one each in tennis and weightlifting.

SHOOTING: India’s 15 member, shooting contingent is the favourite to bring back a big haul of medals.

Nineteen year old Manu Bhaker is one of the top contenders on the 10m Women’s Air Pistol event. She has won two gold medals in ISSF World cup in 2018 and she was the youngest Indian to win gold medals in ISSF World Cup to Commanwealth medal and Youth Olympics.

Shooter Saurabh Chaudhary, world number two and Youth Olympics champion, became the youngest Indian shooter to win a gold at the Asian Games in 2018 when he was just 16. Rahi Sarnobat in the pistol events, rifle marksman and two-time Olympian Sanjeev Rajput (2008 and 2012), and the current world-number-one Divyansh Singh Panwar and Elavenil Valarivan in the men’s and women’s air rifle, respectively.

BADMINTON: In 2016 Rio Olympics, India returned with two medals. A silver for ace shuttler PV Sindhu in the Women’s Singles Badminton.”I was just a participant back then, but now everyone says Sindhu has to get a medal,” she told the BBC recently. Last year, the ace shuttler won the inaugural BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year award. In 2019, she was crowned the World Badminton Champion but her form has had inconsistencies since then. However, she remains India’s top medal prospect.

BOXING: Mary Kom also known as Magnificent Mary, the Iron Lady. She won bronze at the 2012 London Olympics. She is expected to win Gold medal when she participates in Flyweight section. In May, she picked up a silver when she lost the final to Kazakhstan’s Nazym Kyzaibay during the Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai.At 38, Kom may well be taking part in her last Olympics, and India will be rooting for her to increase her tally before she takes off her gloves.

WRESTLING: India had a decent run at the Rio Olympics in 2016, with Sakshi Malik earning a bronze medal. In Tokyo, Vinesh Phogat leads the women’s wrestling team. Having suffered a freak injury during the Rio Olympics, Phogat returned to India in a wheelchair and underwent surgery. The 26-year-old is now roaring to go in the 53kg category with some great wins in the last couple of months, as well as reclaiming the number one ranking. With three world championships to his name, wrestler Bajrang Punia is the top contender from India in the 65kg men’s category at his first Olympics.

WEIGHTLIFTING: The Tokyo Olympics will be Mirabai Chanu’s second time on the big stage. In 2016, she qualified for Rio but failed to record any legal lift in three attempts in the Clean and Jerk category, and was out of the running in the Women’s 48kg category.In 2017, she won gold in the World Weightlifting Championships and went on to win gold in the Commonwealth Games a year later and bronze at the 2019 Asian Weightlifting Championships.

She is the first athlete from India to win Silver medal in 2020 Summer Olympics.

ARCHERY: Only last month, archer Deepika Kumari won three golds at the Archery World Cup in Paris. Deepika Kumari is the number one ranked recurve woman in the world
She is now the world number one in the women’s recurve category and a strong candidate for a medal in Tokyo. Kumari has won nine gold, 12 silver and seven bronze medals at various World Cups and will be looking to add the Olympic medal to her tally now.

The nation is looking forward for more medals from the athletes competing in Tokyo Olympics and also feeling proud of Mirabai Chanu who is the one to win the first medal, silver medal for India in 2020 Olympics until now.

How Much Does India Invest In Olympic Athletes?

Postponed by a year due to the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics is now less than a month away. Last week, the Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju urged the people to extend their support to India’s Olympic-bound athletes, the same way they back India’s cricketers. However, India’s abysmal performances at the Olympics is in striking contrast to India’s immense success at cricket. The model of sports governance and financial irregularities are often blamed for the lack of competitive edge in sports other than cricket. So, the most obvious question that comes to our mind is, how much does India invest in the Olympics?

Money allocated for Sports

In the 2020-21 annual budget, the Government of India allocated Rs 2826.92 crore for sports, which meant an increase of mere ₹ 50 crore from the revised estimates of the financial year 2019-20. The Modi government’s flagship sports programme ‘Khelo India’ received a substantial hike of ₹ 312.42 crore and was allocated ₹ 890.42 crore compared to ₹578 crore in 2019-20. On the other hand, the National Sports Development Fund saw a reduction of ₹ 27.15 crore from ₹77.15 crore in 2019-20 to ₹ 50 crore in 2020-21. National Sports Federations saw the highest decrease after Finance Minister allocated ₹ 245 crore, ₹ 55 crore less than the previous financial year, according to The Wire. Even the budget for meritorious sportspersons saw a 40% reduction from the last financial year. It is important to note that the 2020-21 annual budget was presented in January 2020, when the government had no idea of the coming pandemic. It was also supposed to be the year of the Tokyo Olympics.

Target Olympic Podium Scheme

While these are the broad schemes under which Indian sportspersons are funded, the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) provides financial assistance to potential Olympic medal winners. Launched in 2014, TOPS is the flagship programme of the Sports Ministry of India. The top-up funding scheme considers the performance of Indian athletes in the past three years. They are provided with personal coaches and other staff fees, cost of travel during competitions, purchase of equipment, and pocket allowance.

Looking Back At The Last Olympics

In the 2016 Rio Olympic, India spent ₹ 36.85 crore under TOPS, as per Financial Express. Nearly half of that amount was spent on shooting, which was India’s most successful Olympic sport in the previous three games. Shooting is also very expensive, which requires importing equipment from other countries. But shooting failed to bring any medal. Athletics received the second-highest funding of ₹ 7.80 crore in 2016, but India failed to make a mark in the sport. Unfortunately, out of the ₹ 36.85 crore, ₹30.49 crore had gone to disciplines that fell short of goals. Only 1.66 per cent of the total TOPS fund went to the fields that brought India two medals – PV Sindhu in Badminton and Sakshi Malik in wrestling.

Comparison With Other Countries

The United Kingdom allocated close to Rs 9000 crore on sports infrastructure and training in the annual sports budget, whereas India spent only one-third of the UK, Rs 3,200 crore, on youth affairs and sports, before 2016. The UK won 67 medals against India’s two at the Rio Games 2016. Abhinav Bindra had also tweeted back in 2016 that a medal cost UK 5.5 million pounds, and that is the kind of investment India needs to make. Otherwise, we cannot expect much. In the USA, a large number of athletes are privately funded. Individual athletes had started their own funding portal for donations from the general public. Therefore, only 10% of the US Olympic Committee’s finance was spent on athletes in Rio 2016, and the USA finished first. China, on the other hand, is known for its aggressive state-sponsored promotion of sports.

Private Investment In India

Before the 2016 Olympics, Indian Olympic Association (IOA) received donations from Reliance Jio, Amul, Tata Salt, Edelweiss Financial Services, Herbalife, Li Ning, and SBJ. Sakshi Malik had also thanked JSW Sport, a foundation funded by the OP Jindal group, after becoming India’s first medal winner in Rio Games, as reported by Hindustan Times.

However, unlike NSDF, where the contributions and sponsorships are open and documented, private funding to individual athletes is not. And most recently, the JSW Group has come on board to be the official sponsor of Team India in the Tokyo Olympics and has agreed to pledge sponsorship support of ₹ 1 crore to IOA. In 2018, the Sports Ministry earmarked ₹ 100 crore for funding of the athletes for the preparation of Tokyo Olympics 2020, which will take place this year. While the number of medals won cannot be equated to the investments made, since medals are not the only measure of success, India nonetheless needs to invest more and put in a new model of sports governance in action. A

India win’s its first medal at Tokyo 2020 Olympics

The Olympic flame was lit on 23 July’ 2021 in Tokyo, Japan and the competition for medals and glory is fierce and intense. Mirabai Chanu ended India’s 21-year wait for a weightlifting medal at the Olympics by clinching a silver medal in the 49kg category and opened the country’s account on Saturday. The 26-year-old lifted a total of 202kg (87kg+115kg) to better Karnam Malleswari’s bronze in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Who is Mirabai Chanu?

Saikhom Mirabai Chanu was born on 8 August 1994 in Nongpok Kakching, Imphal, Manipur, to a Meitei family. Her family identified her strength from an early age when she was just 12. She could easily carry a huge bundle of firewood home when her elder brother found it hard to even pick it up.

Chanu’s first major breakthrough came at the Glasgow edition of the Commonwealth Games; she won the silver medal in the 48 kg weight category.

Chanu was felicitated by the Chief Minister of Manipur, N. Biren Singh, who presented her with a cash prize of ₹2 million. She received India’s highest civilian sports honour Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna for 2018. In 2018, Chanu was awarded with the Padma Shri by the Government of India. In 2019, she won Gold at Qatar International Cup, after lifting 194kg