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Sindhu, Sakshi shine as India end Rio Olympics campaign with two medals

At the 2014 Winter Olympics, India suffered the humiliation of being banned from flying its flag at the opening ceremony following corruption concerns.

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Nobody, let alone the government, cares about what needs and need not to be done to improvise on the Olympians who may have brought laurels to the nation as the nation, who cares only about medals and laurels fails to felicitate the players in the truest sense of the term.

The result is unsurprising.

“Everybody is after cricketers in India”. As the report noted, most athletes are wary of pursuing their discipline professionally “because of high risk, uncertainty and low rewards”.

The sport needed a boost at South America’s first Games after its image was tainted four years ago by the expulsion of eight players who deliberately played to lose pool matches in order to secure more favourable draws.

Marking their win in the history of Olympics, the United States of America achieved a major milestone by earning 1,000 gold medals at Rio 2016. The reason? The success of India’s sportswomen.

Sakshi, who had become the first woman wrestler in India to win an Olympic medal with her bronze in the 58kg freestyle, became the obvious choice as India’s only other medallist PV Sindhu, who bagged a silver in women’s singles badminton, left for Hyderabad on Saturday.

Olympic Games of 2016 at Rio de Janeiro ended on Sunday with great fanfare with athletes participating from across the world.

Lalita Babar became the second Indian woman to qualify for the final of a track event at the Olympics in 32 years (PT Usha being the previous one in Los Angeles 1984) and finished 10th in the 3000m steeplechase. Have we done enough for them to be proud of their achievements? Various commentators have pointed out the wonderful “coincidence” of how just a few weeks ahead of a major global sporting event, any number of Indian athletes suddenly break the qualifying mark but are not able to come anywhere near that mark at the actual Olympics where they are eliminated in the very first round, the classic case being that of the triple-jumper Maheshwary.

Malik was born in the northern state of Haryana, which has given India some of its top male wrestlers, including 2012 London Olympics winners Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt, who is also competing in Rio. “Sindhu did not have her phone during the last three months”.

For Babar, becoming a professional sportswoman was in itself a victory against the odds. She never tried to escape from struggles and challenges and was never out of training. “We thought Lalita’s decision to make a career in sports would be an economic burden on the family”. But, then, Indian ministers and officials live in a world of their own and the national men’s team hockey coach Paul van Ass was sacked some months ago because he objected to the federation chief wanting to talk to the players after an worldwide match and rushing into the playing area where only the coach is supposed to interact with the team.

When the Rio noise around her tones down a little, and she comes back home, 21-year-old Sindhu has something to really look forward to. And getting the right shoes is not easy.

Sakshi’s win goes to show that if we can win a bronze, then gold and silver are not far off. We order 5-6 pairs at one time because we can’t take a chance. “To all father who feels that their daughters should not enter sports field she should be an example and even the Haryana govt supports girls to enter sports”, he added. Sakshi’s mother Sudesh Malik echoed similar sentiments.

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In fact, Sakshi’s sensational third place finish came after her teammate Vinesh Phogat was stretchered off after suffering a leg injury that was later found out as a knee ligament tear in her 48kg quarterfinal bout against China’s Sun Yanan. The support paid off, for Malik-and for India. It is 30 cents.

Cash awards pour in for Olympic bronze medallist wrestler Sakshi Malik