Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Names and Faces of Indian Olympic contingent

It turns out there aren't too many sites with profiles of Indian athletes - so much so that my blog is in the first page of google results today for the phrase "indian olympic contingent" - yikes - we are in deeper trouble than I realized if I am the source of information :-)

FYI, thanks to a comment (courtesy preeti) in my previous post, check out Mittal Champions trust for some more details on their athletes.

So I am going to try to make time to put some names, pictures for some categories- essentially doing the work of the IOA, Sports Authority of India, the Khel Ratna nominations committee, etc.

Archery:

Dola Banerjee: Women's Team Recurve



Photo courtesy:

Born Jun 2nd, 1980, hails from West Bengal, and is an Arjuna award winner. She is the gold medalist in the women's individual recurve competition at the archery world cup held at Dubai, in November 2007. More info in the wiki. According to this indian express story, an international standard bow with 12 arrows costs Rs. 8 lakhs atleast! She thanks the Tatas as well.


Pranitha Vardhineni: Women's Team Recurve


Photo courtesy:

An 18 year old from Andra Pradesh, from a remote area called Parvathagiri mandal Her parents are agriculturists. A silver medalist in the Mexico World Cup. More info on her.






Bombayala Devi: Women's Individual and Team Recurve




She hails from Manipur and has several bronze medals and gold medals to her name and has been most consistent. A Mittal Champions Trust Athlete



Mangal Singh Champia:
Men's Individual Recurve


Photo courtesy:
Born: 9 nov 1983

Bronze medalist in the team competition at the 2006 Asian Games, Champia hails from Ichacuti village in Singhbhum district of Jharkhand (Dhoni - highlight him?). A Mittal Champions Trust Athlete. and a gold medalist at the 2008 world cup



Looking for some Brahmastras from you (the archery team from small town & rural India) leading to some medals!

Info courtesy: Wikipedia.
If you interested in the windy conditions in Beijing and how it may impact the archers.
What is Recurve?


If I have got anything wrong about the athletes - let me know.

-------------------------------------------------------------
By the time I finished this post, I realized that I am not going to be able to find time to do this for all the categories, unless I take a break like Dhoni!

Tired - check.
Working without a significant break (small vacations and national holidays don't count) - check.
Important project coming up (alias test series) - check

What do you think? I don't really dare though since it would most likely be a permanent break in that case..

6 comments:

Viswanathan said...

Good job RS.

All your excuses stands dismissed.

You have hardly posted anything this month to claim tiredness. :)

Jokes apart, I can see the general sense of fatigue in the cricket blogosphere.

Every one wants a break. Take it and come back refreshed.

RS said...

@ott - I was talking about a break from work :-) Can I bypass an important project to rest, watch Olympics, cricket and blog? How odd it sounds if anyone suggested it in the working realm! Dhoni is one lucky guy - midas is still with him.

a fan said...

really a good job.

Many times, blogging becomes an all consuming task in ones daily life. That is the problem!

a fan said...

RS,
We both seem to think in similar lines :)
All i can say is, "Reclaim your life" :):)

RS said...

a fan -:-)

It is actually a lot of fun doing this, one of the shooters is an MBA who owns/promotes a company Abhinav Futuristics or something like that. Another's one father sells items on the roadside - just entirely different profiles that seem to represent India.

Viswanathan said...

RS,

From work? :)