A Possible 'Blink and You Will Miss' Appearance on My Games at the BBC Today

Sebastian Coe Responds to my Question (the Boss of 2012 London Olympics) at My Games, BBC

Update- OK, I did appear on My Games again today and asked Sebastian Coe how do they plan to make London Hotels a bit affordable and would the underground system cope? He was very gracious in his reply and it was nice to be on My Games and the BBC again (link to video).

I may feature in the last episode of My Games today (23/08/2008) at 6.15 (pm) India time in a blink and you will miss it type of appearance.

The games are slowly inching to a close and what a show it had been. Phelps with his eight gold medal haul, that is more than what entire nations manage to win! And then there is Mr. Thunder Bolt who is also called Lightening Bolt for the way he sprints.

Abhinav Bindra won the 10m Air Rifle Gold Medal, the first ever individual gold ever won by India. But I find Beijing Olympic Games really special because of the two Bronze Medals won by Sushil Kumar and Vijendra Kumar.

Do you have any idea when they are coming to Delhi from Beijing? My nephew wants to go to the airport!

And hopefully Saina Nehwal will get all the support she will need to win at London 2012. With Mittal Champions Trust behind her, who knows.

The Perils of not having Access to TV!

The bout between Vijendra and Emilio Correa is about to begin and I can't watch it. I will be updating the Beijing Olympics' Official Website to see the results. As of now the previous bout is running. And on papers Correa looks stronger, he is the Pan American champion for the year 2005 and 2008 and was third in the world championship in 2005.

Vijendra on the other hand 17th in Athens 2004, 17th in World Championship in 2007 and 2nd in Asian Championship in 2007 (all data for both the players comes from their biographies on the Beijing Olympics site, link in the first line of the post).

But then that is just on papers. Who knows, what will actually happen today!

Ah, the bout has started and I can't know the scores, maybe I should call home!

Oh well, the young lad lost 5:8. I hope there would be at least two more Olympics for him and congratulations on another Bronze.

More on Bhiwani Boxing Club and Sushil Kumar

I discovered via Sen's Spot this wonderful BBC article on BBC (Bhiwani Boxing Club) and Vijendra Kumar. The video in the BBC article is worth watching, it gives the glimpse of the coach Jagdish Singh at Bhiwani Boxing Club (BBC) and a view of the facilities. I came to know via the article that Vijendra has already done modeling for magazines! No wonder all of us thought he is good looking. Here is what Vijendra said in the BBC article-

Although he is a boxing champion, Vijender Kumar is an oddity in India, a virtual one-sport country where cricket is religion.

The son of a bus driver who worked overtime to pay for his coaching, Vijender is India's unsung champion boxer.

"My blood boils when everybody goes gaga over cricket", says the 22-year-old, one of five boxers in India's modest Olympics contingent to Beijing this summer.

And then Indian Express reported this about Sushil Kumar's training quarters.

Squeezed into tiny rooms at the stadium’s residential facility, with rats, cockroaches and cobwebs for company, the conditions are not really conducive to breed a champion. But for these men, it’s just a way of life.
...
Even at NIS, Patiala, where India’s Beijing-bound wrestlers were training, the conditions had been difficult. Before they left for the Olympics, the wrestlers had told The Indian Express that the “callous attitude of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) administration could seriously hamper India’s medal prospects”. “Right from filling water-coolers to sweating it out in wrestling halls with not even air-cooling facilities, it was tough for them,” said a local wrestler on Wednesday. “I have seen with my eyes how the wrestling staff practised in the summer heat. But still they managed to get a medal.”

In this context the post at Smoke Signals (via Desipundit) makes hell lot of sense.

Sushil Kumar won despite the abysmal training facilities provided to him. IOA can take no credit for ... medal. Instead, their noses should be collectively rubbed in our overall results in Beijing.

Who Are You? M.S. Gill, the Union Sports Minister Asks National Badminton Coach and All England Champion Pullela Gopichand!

It is in many newspapers, I read it in the Indian Express. Saina Nehwal and Pullela Gopichand go to meet M.S. Gill, the country's sports minister. Gill recognizes Saina (she lost in the quarter finals in the badminton singles event at Beijing). Then he turns to ask Gopichand- "Who are you?"

While Gill greeted Saina heartily, he could not recognise Gopichand who was standing next to Saina and asked him who he was.

“Who are you?” Gill asked Gopichand, leaving him with no other option but to spell out his name.

Gopichand is only the second Indian after Prakash Padukone to win the All England Open Champion in 2001 ...

Now I was relating this incident to my colleagues in the office and one of then quipped, "Well, if someone would ask M.S. Gill do you know Padukone his reply would be of course he knows Deepika Padukone, she is the famous model and film star."

I wouldn't really be surprised if this happens!

And for many of us Prakash Padukone is always going to be the real star.

Go Vijendra Go! And Thank You Sushil Kumar!

Vijendra is now in the semi finals of the Middle Weight Boxing championship. So that assures us of a bronze medal at least! I hope we will see him the finals. He is from Bhiwani.

And I had never heard of Sushil Kumar before today! He lives in Najafgarh! Here is what Sushil Kumar's father said-

Talk to his village folk in Boprala in Najafgarh, West Delhi, they will tell you that they knew he was destined for great things, even if wrestling does not get the importance it deserves in this country.

The entire village celebrated Sushil's success and every household from the village head downwards said he was their darling son.

His father Diwan Singh, an MTNL driver, said his son promised him a gold and that Sushil must be disappointed for getting a just the bronze. He has put Boprala on the wrestling map of the world.

The Other BBC- Bhiwani Boxing Club

Yes, Akhil Kumar lost yesterday but somehow I find his achievement staggering because of the odds the Bhiwani Boxing Club faces. Sen at Sen’s Spot compiles a post that quotes and inks to various newspaper articles on BBC, the Bhiwani Boxing Club.

A tin of covers the boxing arena. A majority of the kids here don’t have their own gloves. And to drink water after practice, the lone hand-pump has to be operated very slowly, otherwise sand particles will start coming out along with the water.

And I hope the two other Kumars, Jitendra and Vijendra Kumar will win tomorrow.

Cross Posted at Blogbharti.

What Did they Win? Well a Bronze and a Doubles Gold!

I have been following the Beijing Olympics as much as I can. At the start of the games, I was reading this blog post by Matt Slater on Tennis in Olympics at the BBC. Andy Murray had lost in his first round match at Beijing and Slater argued that Olympics is not an important tournament, particularly when the US open is round the corner. This is what he wrote about Murray's match-

Sadly, it seemed to dawn on the (by now) Scot he was miserably out of sorts and probably wasting his time against a mediocre but far more up-for-it opponent, in an event he shouldn't be playing in anyway when the US Open is only a fortnight away.
...
If winning an Olympic gold medal is not the highest accolade in your sport, you're playing a non-Olympic sport. Tennis fails this test by some margin - are the Games even the fifth biggest event on the sport's schedule?

And to me also it looked like he had a point, the past singles winner in the men's section, again to quote Slater's post are "... Nicolas Massu, in case you'd forgotten: before him the winners include Marc Rosset and Miloslav Mecir." Well not anymore, the winner at Beijing is Rafael Nadal!

But then what surprised me even more was the reaction of Roger Federer, after winning at Beijing. I mean he screamed as if he he had won the Wimbledon rather than men's doubles gold medal. I wish I could paste his screaming picture here, better still, if I had watched the match live and clicked a picture myself. But this is what I will do, instead. Click the following link and see the screaming Roger Federer here if you have not seen it live. I mean, I can understand Wawrinka's reaction but Federer's Wimbledon like scream was such a pleasant surprise, particularly when he lost in the quarter finals in the singles' event.

Then there was this gentleman, Novak Djokovic. I mean I had seen him win the Australian Open this year, his first Grand Slam ever. And then he won a Olympic Bronze medal at the Beijing! And he tore his shirt (link to photo from Djokovic's official site, I am referring to the third photo in the second row) and threw two of his rackets in the stand along with that shirt.

And I thought these two images say much more than all my words put together about how Tennis fared at the Beijing Olympics!

PS. All those Bhiwani Dudes are doing us proud in boxing, I never imagined I could watch boxing with this amount of interest!

Pre-show Chat with Adnan Nawaz, The Host of My Games Show at he BBC

Screen Shot of the My Games Program on Olympics at the BBC, Adnan Nawaz with Us

I have to admit I do not enjoy a post till I can associate a picture with it! So for this one, I decided to go for a screen shot of the My Games Olympics show on the BBC on which I too appeared.

I, of course, almost did not make it. When I was desparately trying to make the technology work before the show, in the middle of all the trouble my mobile started ringing and the number was as unfamiliar as it could be, it had to be an ISD call. So when I pick it up, I heard a voice at the other end say, "So, is it Mridula I am talking to? Hi, I am Adnan from Beijing, from the My Games Show."*

So after a bit of chat, Adan said, "You know we share a cultural heritage, I am from Pakistan." I readily agreed with him. I immediately knew then that he would understand about the power cut that had already lasted for two hours and that could lead to our inverter batteries getting discharged thus rendeering my internet modem and connection defunct! He, of course, understood.

But what I liked most about this chat was when he mentioned that he wanted to be a professional sports person and his parents wanted him to be a lawyer or a doctor! But then in my opinion he did the next best thing, if you can't be a professional sports person, you should become a sports journalist!

*All the quotes attributed to Adnan are from memory and should be treated as paraphrases at the best, but I have tried to remain true to the conversation.

Abhinav Bindra Wins Gold!

How nice it feels to look at the official results and see Abhinav Bindra's name on top. Hop over and have a look at the results of the 10m Air Rifle Final Official Results.

Update (13/08/2008)- This is no attempt to take any credit away from Abhinav Bindra's historic performance but did Abhinav Bindra's father really say this?

Silent killer, as described by his father, he is the one who spotted his son's talent when Abhinav was 5 years old. "He kept a water balloon on our maid's head and began shooting, knowing little that a slight mistake could have proved fatal. But his aim was so perfect that I couldn't think about anything else but make him a pro," says AS Bindra.

There has been a discussion on this on Indiamike too, got somewhat heated at times, but if you know of any links that followed up on this piece of reporting please share it with me.

I wonder what kind of a gun a five year old can be playing with, this could a case of media misquoting the father or the father saying something he didn't mean. But I guess the parents need to shut up and let the lad do the talking, he is much better at it.

Beijing Olympics- Mangal Singh Champia Ranked Second in Initial Rounds in Archery

I was searching for Olympic results for India. Could see a lot of news items for Anjali Bhagwat and Avneet not qualifying for women shooting events. But found about Mangal Singh Champia's second place in 'ranking rounds' (don't ask me what they are) on this website called Great Findings.

I digged news but found nothing. Beijing Official Olympic Website confirms the same.

1. Serrano Juan Rene
2. Champia Mangal Singh

If you know more about this event do drop a comment. I would really like to know what are his medal prospects now! I am sure news will trickle in slowly about this, once the media is over the disappointment of the shooters.

Archery Update (10/08/08)

Mangal Singh Champia takes Vaezi Hojjatolah from Iran on August 13, 2008 for 1/32 eliminations.

Badminton
Saina Nehwal clears two rounds, both in straight sets, beating today (10/08/08) Larysa Gryga of Ukraine 21-18, 21-10.

Anup Shridhar feature in the round of 64 today (10/08/08).

Saina Nehwal defeats world number 4 to reach to the quarterfinals! Her quarter final match schedule and the results of this match are on the Beijing Olympics official site!

Rowing
Bajranglal Takhar reaches quarterfinals in rowing event.

PS. Today evening sometime between 6.00 to 6.30 pm I may feature on BBC World TV program My Games via webcam. I would blog about this later in detail.