Suresh Rana- Winner of Raid-de-Himalaya

Disha Singh at myHimachal talks to Suresh Rana winner of Raid-de-Himalaya.

Disha: Your most unforgettable moment/s?

Rana: The worst memory was when the raid got stuck in Sarchu (the Himachal& J-K border towards Ladakh) and we all had to be evacuated. It was pretty grim as we could not do anything to the forces of nature. It was near death experience and the happiest moment also came in the same episode of being evacuated.

Cross Posted at Blogbharti

Raid De Himalaya

Image from myHimachal

If you like to drive and better still on the mountain roads, myHimachal is blogging about Raid De Himalaya, I would go take an Avomine and go to sleep, I get such bad motion sickness on mountain roads!

Cross Posted at Blogbharti.

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.

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!

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.

Lazy Sunday Video- My Games, The BBC Interactive Olympics Program

I appeared on the BBC show 'My Games' yesterday at around 6.15 pm our time (India). The focus of the program is on the Beijing Olympics. They invites fans to join them via a webcam and for a while the video of the show is available at the BBC site.

How Did the Show Happened- I am a regular reader of the BBC website, so one day late at night I saw a news story where they were inviting reader's comments on how we view the Olympics. I don't know what did it but I talked about the time when I used to train as an athlete, a time I really do not like to talk about. Here is a slightly edited version of what I wrote that night-

I used to be a middle distance runner in India, represented my state in the school games. I was a natural at high jump but could never learn Fosbury Flop as there were only sand pits in the small town stadium I used to practice.

The camp prior to the nationals, it was run by a colonel who had no understanding of sports! He would have a weird schedule and would not let me practice according to what my coach prescribed! The food at the camp was appalling. Still at the trials I gave good timings in both 800m and was decent at high jump. However, I peaked too early and performed miserably in the nationals. I was only 16 then. Now I am ... with a Ph.D. from ... and very happy my academic career.

However, recently a student of mine has started training for middle distance and even now 20 years later our stories are the same. He can afford a personal trainer (thanks to the pockets of prosperity in the country now) but he says nothing much have changed with the camps, the food is still appalling. I think we have money in India but no system or vision.

Even then there are some very good athletes within India, product of their individual efforts. I would be watching Mahesh Bhupati and Leander Paes in Tennis and Rajyavardhan Rathore in shooting. Also I hope the young badminton player Saina Nehwal does well! ...

Rather a long rant I must say! Well after some days I heard from the BBC team again and they asked me if I had a webcam and more about my views, the stories that I find interesting and Olympics in general. I remembered a webcam lying somewhere, so I said yes. That is when the fun began!

Before the Show- If you managed to watch the video, you really cannot imagine the trouble I gave the BBC technology team! My contact with the BBC was with the most wonderful and really really patient Carolyn Rice. So a few days before the show, on her insistence, I got my webcam out. It was 8.00 or so at night, I had come back from work a while ago and my husband Sesha (who is the technology person at home) gave me the webcam and the installation CD and went back to playing violin. I installed the software (with occasional grunts from Sesha coming my way as support and encouragement) and saw the output of the webcam. My heart sank, the video was so grainy. I immediately wrote to Carolyn that I have a very lousy webcam and I am sorry, that's it! (not in so many words but definitely to that effect). But she is one lady who does not gets deterred by mere mortals like me.

By the time I appeared on the show we had exchanged around 40 emails (written by both of us combined, still sitting in my gmail) and I had three phone calls from the BBC studios! That is the amount of trouble they took to get me on show.

The first stumbling block we faced was with the link Carolyn sent me to join the web conference. It required some plugin downloads. I did everything and got a message in the end 'the plugin is not compatible with Firefox version 3.0.1.' I was ready to give up but not Carolyn! She send me another link, I got the same error again. I offered her to use Internet Explorer and yes, things started working.

Later Sesha asks me to change the focus of the webcam but added that the output has always been bad whenever he used it. And the output could be better on his PC rather than my five year old almost dead laptop. I installed everything again on his PC, all this while shooting many of those 40 mails we exchanged to Carolyn with problems real and imagined.

At one point she asked if she could come in and work with my desktop! My jaw drops in amazement but I of course said yes. So here I am sitting with my hands off the keyboards and the mouse is moving on its own! When I tell this excitedly to Sesha, he gives me that look and says, yeah they do it everyday at work! So much so for my wonder.

Anyway, we move ahead, I adjust the webcam lens and Carolyn says the picture is quite good, though a bit dark, can I get some extra light? Wonder of all wonders, we do not have a table lamp at home! So, I ask my younger nephew to ask one of his friends, if he has one. I get to know that he has and of course I can have it. Next logical step was to check the sound but we cannot check the sound as the headphones I was using, its microphone was broken. I offer tentatively to get a new one tomorrow, thinking she would run out of patience. But Carolyn is patient, she tells me not to worry, we can of course do the sound test the next day.

The next day (that is Friday and the show is on Saturday) it has been raining like anything and I ask Sesha to get the microphones and he agrees. So sometime after 8.00 pm we sit down again and try the sound. Well, the PC has a loose contact with the audio ports, tells Sesha. I ask Carolyn if I should try my laptop? The ever patient person she is, she agrees. I start my laptop (that takes ages to boot and the semicolon key doesn't work, among many other quirks) move the webcam and the mike and connect to the web conference again. Things are working fine, only that extra light remains. During the day, I somehow forgot about the extra light! She says we will do a mock run again tomorrow, the day of the show, at 2.30 pm my time and I can get the extra light then! I agree.

The D Day- I wake up late (around 11.00 am India time) on Saturday and after a cup of tea, switch on the laptop. The keyboard is working but the mouse pad is not! Whatever tricks my nephew and I try, the laptop would not budge. Sesha is away at his music school. I of course panic. My nephew says let us try using the laptop via the keyboard but I find it too cumbersome. I go back to the PC and ask my nephew to go and get that table lamp. The sound at PC won't work! The keyboard at the laptop won't work and the friend's table lamp has the shades that will cast the light downward only.

I finally decide to give up. It is 1.00 pm and I write another of those 40 mails to Carolyn, this time apologising a lot and basically trying to tell her it is all over. She has other ideas. Within a few minutes of writing that mail there is a call on my cell and yes it is Carolyn on the line. She tells me not to worry about the audio, they would get me on phone if it did not work on the PC! I promise her to try again. I also tell her that we had no power since the last two hours and our power backup (inverter as we all know here) may conk. I am sure that must have made her wonder for a while too! But we decide to test the device at 2.30pm as agreed.

Within a few minutes again, I get a phone call from Beijing and this time it is Adnan Nawaz, the presenter of the show on the line. And I mean he too was so nice on the phone (this will be another blog post) that I was really feeling guilty by now. When I told him about the power cut, he of course understood what type of disaster it meant.

I finally decide to put my limited tech skills to work. I get the external mouse out of Sesha's laptop bag (it is his office laptop, so I do not go anywhere near it) and attached it to mine! Miraculously it worked! Now only the extra source of light remained. It was 1.45 already and I tell my nephew, lets go to the market and get the kind of table lamp we need. I wrote to Carolyn, saying I am out of the house and to give me till 3.00 pm to get online again.

So a little before 3.00, I sit with my laptop, with the external mouse working and the lamp (which we got after looking in at least 5 shops) throwing a lot of light at my face. Carolyn also comes online and says it is perfect! By 6.15, I go on the show live. And rest of course you can watch on the video!

Could you have ever imagined the real story of how I got on the show? Without the support from Carolyn, I would have given up long ago. And talking to Adnan and having the same South East Aisan heritage also did the trick. But as I said, that would be another post.

So, thank you so much Carolyn for finally getting me on the show. Was I your most difficult viewer? I guess so!

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.

Off Topic- Thai Airways Espnstar.com Wimbledon Contest

You know, sometimes I do things on a whim, without any rhyme or reason! I watch Tennis a lot, at least I try to catch up all the grand slams. No, no watching Tennis is not what I am calling doing things without a rhyme or reason.

I tried to predict the winners for Wimbledon 2008 at Thai Airways ESPNStar.com Contest. Now that clearly belongs to 'doing things without rhyme or reason.'

But it got curiouser from there. I am using Mozilla Firefox and I tried filling out the form. Jeez it would not let me pick 'female' as my gender. And I must say that is mighty irritating. I mean in this age and time? Could be a bug? That is a stupid bug if it is.

Could be a malware/virus on my computer. But then if you have sometime to spare and if you use firefox would you please try this and let me know if it is a virus or not?

PS. I picked Roger Federer and Svetlana Kuznetsova as my winners. I am bored with Federer winning Wimbledon so many times but then he has not won anything this year and I am sure he is going to try hard. Kuznetsova I picked up on a whim! She also seems to be in form.

PPS. I am mailing to the good folks at contest@espnstar.com too. Let us see if there is something in this or if it is just my computer.

Update 1- Asked a friend who was online to try this out for me. She says she too can't pick 'female' as her gender in Firefox but can do so in IE. Now I have no idea what percent of the market is with Firefox but it is a mighty decent browser. Were the ESPN Star guys rushing when they did the site?