By Pankaj Yadav
NEW DELHI, Jul 23 (NNN-XINHUA) – With the world’s biggest sporting event, the Tokyo Olympics about to start this evening, India hopes to make it big, in terms of medals tally this time.
The world’s leading data and technology company, Gracenote, predicted India will finish with 19 medals, including four gold.
The South Asian country has so far won only 28 Olympic medals, with just two medals at the last edition in Rio.
India sent its biggest-ever sporting contingent this Olympics, comprising 127 athletes, including around 55 women, who would participate in as many as 18 sporting categories.
Karnam Malleswari, the country’s first woman to win an Olympic medal, a bronze in weightlifting, at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, told Xinhua that, the present Indian contingent is a strong team in various categories, and that she is hopeful that India’s medals tally will improve.
“For the past several years, our sportspersons trained on foreign soil under watchful eyes of world-class coaches. I am sure our athletes will win medals in Tokyo, as the government put so much efforts in bringing out the best out of them,” said Karnam.
For the past several years India has invested hugely in improving the sports paraphernalia and overall standard, by setting up new stadiums, going in for talent hunt, and encouraging youths to take up sports as a career.
As per official figures from federal sports ministry, between 2014 and 2020, scholarships worth 830 million Indian Rupees (about 11.2 million U.S. dollars) have been disbursed among promising athletes, and around 3.2 million U.S. dollars given exclusively to those nurturing talent to qualify for the Olympics.
In a bid to prepare sportspersons for the Olympics, Indian government launched the ambitious “Target Olympic Podium Scheme” (TOPS) in 2014. The Scheme aims at extending all requisite support to probable athletes, including foreign training, international competition, equipment and coaching camp, besides monthly stipend of 50,000 Indian Rupees (about 676 U.S. dollars) for each athlete.
As many as 160 top level athletes were included in TOPS for the Tokyo Olympics and the world’s best professional coaches were hired for their training.
In the 2008 Olympics, only 67 sportspersons competed in only 12 sports categories, winning three medals, including one gold and two bronze.
In 2012 India’s tally improved from three to six, including two silver and four bronze. It was again hailed as the sportspersons “doubled” the medals tally.
In the last Olympics held in Brazil, India won just two medals – a silver and a bronze, both won by women athletes.
India has so far won nine gold medals, seven silver and 12 bronze medals, from as many as 31 Olympic Games.– NNN-XINHUA
