At Rio Olympics 2016, the women of India put patriarchy to shame.
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The trio notched a few firsts for India; Sindhu, at 21, became the youngest to win an Olympic medal, a silver which was never achieved in badminton; and Sakshi’s bronze was also a first for women’s wrestling.
Rao said the unbelievable performance of Indian women in Rio Olympics was inspiring.
She has matured tremendously since then and is now a top player in her own right. The Spaniard gave her little room for manoeuvre in the next two games, though Sindhu had competed extremely well in the first game with Carolina. Sindhu, like a true fighter, matched the world champion shot by shot and point by point.
Apart from constantly talking to his daughter about her game, Sindhu’s father also used to wake up at 3 in the morning and drive her to Pullela Gopichand’s training academy at 4 am every morning. PM Modi’s tweet comes as humbles gesture towards the sacrifice athletes made for bringing laurels to their country.
“Definitely, I am not so happy with the result because we were expecting more”. I am not a very rich person. I also stopped her from eating ice-cream.
In the closing ceremony that will be held later in the night, India have appointed wrestler Sakshi Malik as their flag bearer. Down 0-5 at half-way stage, Sakshi pulled off a heist in the final moments of her bronze-medal bout.
Meanwhile, American swimmer Michael Phelps continued his dominance of the pool as he extended his tally to a staggering 22 Olympic gold medals, to end his career with a total of 28 Olympic medals.
“India’s pride”, “gems of India” and “champion tridev” are just some of the terms Twitter’s using to describe this epic picture of India’s returning heroes, fresh from their success at the Rio Olympics.
Coming into the tournament as world number 10, the 13th seed was a transformed player as she defeated three players ranking better than her.
Archers were the first to land in Rio a month before the Games to acclimatise themselves to the conditions and maintained isolation but it hardly translated into performance as they failed to progress beyond quarters, while in individual sections Atanu Das, Deepika Kumari and Bombayla Devi made last 16 exits. It was very close to medal. “After four years, my target would be gold”, Dipa said. The third set ended up in a tie before Lee grabbed the fourth set. However, he could only strike a 9, which was enough to tie the fifth set 28-28 but not enough to save the match.
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The victory also saw her become only the fourth Indian wrestler to win a medal in Olympics after Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt. “I’m satisfied with the finish but not with the timing. The target was to go below nine minutes 15 seconds”, Lalita said after her event. We were expecting that we will take eight or nine medals in this game.
