The cricket culture of India does not lend itself easily to sporting excellence in the hundreds of other arenas of sport open to young people in the most modern era.
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PV Sindhu created history on Friday as she became the first Indian woman to clinch silver at the Olympics.
On Wednesday, 23-year-old Ms Sakshi ended the country’s wait for a medal at the Rio Olympic Games as she bagged the bronze medal in women’s wrestling in the 58 kg category, pulling off a dramatic 8-5 victory in the play-off bout. It would make sense then to back the meritorious and the talented so as to give them a chance of correcting the gathering gloom of statistics that points to medal achievements per capita being the lowest for India and its 1.3 billion population. Sindhu, in fact came close to making it a gold.
Sakshi won India’s first medal at the Rio Games.
“They make us proud”.
N Ramachandran, President of the Indian Olympic Association, came to the Olympic Village and wished the two medallists and their coaches.
Further appreciating the efforts of Sindhu’s coach for providing such extraordinary training he added “I would give the entire credit to P. Gopichand, he gave unbelievable training to Sindhu”.
The Games will close a circle with Olympic flame being extinguished and apart from the melancholy the organisers have promised to show the best of Brazil.
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According to Rio 2016 communications director Mario Andrara, 41,233 tickets were sold for the Closing Ceremony at the Maracana.
