As the Indian athletics contingent boarded their flight to Gumi, South Korea, this week for the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships it wasn’t just another international tour. This was a statement of intent. A 65-member Indian team, boasting a potent mix of proven champions, rising stars, and debutants with fearless ambition, departed to contest the 26th…
Robert Bobby George is one of the sharpest minds in Indian Athletics. At the junior national athletics championships at Guntur in 2017, he noticed something special in Shaili Singh the teenager who finished 5th in women’s long jump at the U-14 level. What stuck out was the intensity with which she completed her jumps, even…
Indian women’s wrestling team for the Asian wrestling championships at Amman is a mix of prodigies like Antim (53kg), Reetika (76kg), Mansi Lather (68kg) and Jyoti Berwal (73kg) and wrestlers making comebacks into the team like Ankush (50kg), Nishu (55kg) and Manisha (62kg). Japan has entered a really strong team with 7 world champions (former…
If you are an Indian sports fan who does not follow cricket, the time following Paris 2024 has been a rough and dry period. Indian Wrestlers gear up for Asian Wrestling Championships Nothing much has happened; all the big guns are rejuvenating themselves. Badminton- the one sport that has been giving us something to cheer…
The 38th National Games of India are finally upon us and as in any multi-sport event, athletics will be the cynosure of all eyes. Athletics at National Games are one of the keenly followed action However, the timing of the event couldn’t have been worse. Coming bang in the off-season, when most of the stadia…
The All-India Inter-University athletics meet was held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha at the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) in the last week of 2024 (December 26th to 30th). Coming right at the back of the Junior national championships (held in the same city at a different venue), it was another opportunity for our young stars…
Athletics Federation of India (AFI) and its president, Adille Sumariwalla have achieved a coup of sorts by bringing a World Athletics (previously IAAF) event to India after a gap of 20 years. India last hosted an IAAF event in 2004- the World Half-marathon Championships in Delhi. Since then, India has hosted the Commonwealth Games in…
The world junior athletics championships have been a happy event for India in the past 10 years with the ground-breaking achievements of Neeraj Chopra in 2016, Hima Das in 2018 and many other impressive performances from the likes of Rupal, Priya Mohan, Shaili Singh and Selva Prabhu. This year’s championships at Lima were underwhelming for…
India finished with a whopping Nine Medals at the recently concluded U23 World Wrestling Championships, which includes 1 Gold, 1 Silver and 7 Bronze Medals Here’s we look at the performance in each category of Men Freestyle and Women Wrestling. Starting with Women’s wrestling WW-50kg: Umi Ito (Japan) and Sage Raine Mortimer (USA) were clearly…
Will we see a new bunch of future champions from Under-23 Wrestling Championships considering how turbulent 2024 has been for Indian Wrestling ? With all the drama leading up to the Olympics, it was clear, things were not going to be easy. The men’s freestyle team which has given India 5 medals since 2008 had…
After a hectic year with the Olympics, many Olympic qualification tournaments (+ trials to select a team for the Olympics) and 3 ISSF world cups across the shooting world (Cairo, Rabat, Baku, Lonato and Munich), we have finally arrived at the final ISSF tournament of 2024- the ISSF shooting world cup finals. New Delhi is…
Even though the activity has been part of human civilisation since the stone age and is an integral part of Indian mythology, archery in India is still thought of as some medieval pastime. Archery in the modern Olympics has been a sport which has not had a smooth ride. The shooting of targets with 10…
Neeraj Chopra The story for me, starts on a Saturday evening in July 2016. Bydgoszcz? Where in the world is Bydgoszcz? Pronounced Big-Dosh-Cha. There was news coming in that an 18-year-old teenager from Panipat, Haryana had broken the junior world record in men’s Javelin at Bydgoszcz, Poland. By then I had been following sports for…
As I sit down to write this article, I realise Paris 2024 is just over a month away and a nervous energy grips me. Indian athletes is to look for. The wait for the magical fortnight that comes every four years is finally going to be over. Tokyo 2020 was different. I knew Neeraj Chopra…
The next leg of the FIH Pro League for the Indian men’s hockey team will get underway in Antwerp, Belgium from the 22nd of May (Wednesday). This mini tournament will feature Argentina, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain (GB), alongside India. The first leg will be held in Antwerp with 2 matches each, against Argentina and…
Let me get some things straight. I started writing this article with a lot of hope for Asian Qualifiers Then came the news of Sujeet and Deepak being stranded in Dubai and unable to reach the venue for the weigh-in. Jaideep’s performance was heart-warming. After Aman’s loss, I felt like ‘what is the point of…
The next event in wrestling for qualification to Paris 2024 is almost upon us, with the Asian Olympic Qualifier tournament in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan from April 19th to 21st. There will be two quota places on offer in each event [6 each in men’s freestyle(FS), men’s Greco-Roman (GR) and women’s wrestling (WW)]. The format is very…
Hockey India (HI) has decided to revive the Hockey India league (HIL) after a gap of seven years. A window has been tentatively fixed between December ’24 and January ’25. Under the leadership of Dilip Tirkey, there is hope that this new version, with 8 men’s and 6 women’s teams, will further ignite the growing…
I am no expert in shooting. I have absolutely no skin in the game. What I am is an earnest fan of the sport. I have been following it since the 2000 Olympics and more closely in this Olympic cycle. Shooting has a special place in my heart because it has the potential to bring…
