SPORTS

Army chief General MM Naravane met and greeted Subedar Neeraj Chopra at the national capital on Tuesday, a day after the javelin star arrived from Tokyo. Chopra became the first-ever Indian to win a track and field gold at the Olympic Games when won the Men's Javelin event at Tokyo 2020.

Army Chief MM Naravane complimented Neeraj Chopra for his historic gold-medal winning performance. He also met with the family members of Neeraj, who had travelled to Delhi from Panipat to receive their son.

"General MM Naravane #COAS also congratulated the family members of Subedar Neeraj Chopra on his stupendous performance," it added.

Felicitating India’s Olympics contingent, which is back with seven medals, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said their performance marks India’s resurgence in sports. “It is in respect of number of Olympic medals won, that our nation has been subjected to despair for too long”

He said that “no nation can hold its head high in any domain with such lack of confidence and low self-esteem” and it is “more so, for a young India, whose voice is finding increasing traction on the world stage”.

Bronze medal winning wrestler Bajrang Punia led the Indian contingent as the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony was held in an empty Olympic Stadium in Tokyo on Sunday. Bajrang was the designated flag bearer for India in the closing ceremony, with boxing great Mary Kom and men's hockey team captain Manpreet Singh being India's flag bearers in the opening ceremony.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach declared the Games closed at the end of the ceremony, thus marking the end of an Olympics that was held amidst strict restrictions and an emergency in Tokyo due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For India, the closing ceremony marked the end of a memorable campaign in which the contingent won a record seven medals, the most they have ever won at a single edition of the Olympics.

Tokyo Olympics 2020 will be considered as the most diverse and gender-equal Olympics out of all the 206 Olympics that have been held so far. But, of course, this is just the beginning. According to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) press release, almost 49 per cent of the athletes that have participated are women and this is the first gender-balanced game in history.

To look at Paralympic Games, almost 40.5 per cent are women which leads to the participation of 1,782 women athletes as compared to 1,671 athletes who had competed at Rio 2016. Thus, Tokyo 2020 Olympics does have the right step in the right direction. The only thing that one should be doing now is encouraging and making things easier for women by supporting them. Representing India at the Olympics, especially in a game like hockey which is majorly male-dominated and has very limited funding whose major portion is sent to the men's team, is very difficult and beyond words comprehensible. Needless to say, a woman has to fight not just to win a game but also to win a battle based on social, economic, and political background.

Ravi Kumar Dahiya finished with the silver medal after losing 7-4 to World champion Zaur Uguev of Russia in the keenly-fought men’s 57kg freestyle final on Thursday.

The 23-year-old Ravi became the second Indian wrestler, after Sushil Kumar, to get a silver medal in the Olympics. He had lost to Uguev in the semifinal of the World wrestling championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, in 2019.

Worlds silver medallist Deepak Punia went down fighting to San Marino’s Myles Amine 4-2 in an 86kg bronze medal match to end his campaign on a disappointing note.

In the much-anticipated gold medal contest, Uguev took an early lead by pushing Ravi out of the circle twice. Ravi, a Worlds bronze medallist and a two-time Asian champion, caught up with the Russian through a fine takedown from the left.