Thursday, December 14, 2006

Heroes and heroines at the Games

Jaspal Rana, the 18-year old wonderkid we saw a while ago, is back in action, and I can't believe it's been 12 long years! He's named the best athlete at the Asian Games at Doha. I hope he does not go back to oblivion again as he did once. (It seems he was fighting some illness).

While we remember Rana's name even after quite a long time, most athletes don't enjoy so much of our attention. Mahesh and Paes are making news for wrong reasons. Sania has become more of page 3 than the sports page. Other names and snaps are in the newspapers when they fetch us medals at the Games, but the names go unregistered. Let me raise a toast for you guys (we are going to forget you all in a few days anyway)..

Sinimol Paulose who won bronze in 1500m;
Yogeshwar Dutt who won a wrestling bronze;
Archery team that won bronze;
Sailing team that won silver;
Aboobakker Thanikkal, Joseph Abraham, Bhupinder Singh and K M Binu who won silver in the men's 4x400m relay;
Pinki Pramanik, Satti Geetha, Chitra Soman and Manjeet Kaur who won gold in women's 4x400m (she also won a silver in the individual 400m) ...

(I have already forgotten the rest!)

1 comment:

Sudeep said...

It seems it was a goof-up by the India Olympic Association about Rana being named the Most Valuable Player at the Games. He was just one of the nominees. (also see this.

Korean swimmer Park Tae Hwan, who won three gold, one silver and three bronze medals, was named the Samsung Most Valuable Player of the 15th Asian Games.

Qatar won the football gold and put up a very good show in the games overall. India can thank their chess team for the gold medal tally not falling into single digits.