“I am happy that I won an Olympic medal”. Anyway, I hope my coming years would be very good. It was heavily strapped, and I tried my best.
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Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna were denied a place in the mixed doubles tennis final at the Rio Olympics after they lost 6-2, 2-6, 3-10 to United States’ Venus Williams and Rajeev Ram.
They will now take on the Czech combine of Lucie Hradecka and Radek Stepanek in the bronze medal match on Sunday.
Venus was once again broken, and Sania served out the set in the eighth game, with Bopanna finding a cross court backhand victor, bisecting the two Americans. Nishikori triumphed 6-2, 6-7 (1/7), 6-3 to become the first Japanese tennis medallist since Antwerp in 1920 when the country won men’s silver and men’s doubles silver. But that would be the last time they led the match as Venus unleashed a number of strong forehands to level the tie-break 3-3.
But their response to the setback was promising, breaking back immediately to square it 1-1 and then went 3-1 ahead. “Seedings don’t matter, with two sets and a deciding tie break any body has a chance”.
Powerful serves from the racquet of Bopanna meant that the Indians only conslidated the break. Lucie saved for the match and claimed the contest in the first match point itself. Sania and Bopanna converted three of four breakpoints while the opponents converted one of two.
A visibly upset Bopanna said, “Right now, it’s really hard to focus”. A few minutes earlier, she wept copiously while being interviewed by a TV journalist.
India’s women’s hockey team was crushed by higher-ranked Argentina 0-5 to suffer fourth consecutive loss in Pool B and failed to advance to the quarter-finals of the Olympic Games here on Saturday.Martina Cavallero (16th and 29th minutes), Maria Granatto (23rd), Carla Rebecchi (26th) and Agustina Albertarrio (27th) scored for the world No.2 side. Her heavy topspin ground strokes began to land in instead of spraying all over and the U.S. pair began to go for Mirza’s serve.
While Narang, who won the London Games bronze in 10m Air Rifle, signed off 13th with a total score of 623.1, Singh was way down at 36th with a score of 619.6 in the qualification round.
India, which have sent their largest-ever contingent of 119 athletes in Rio Olympics, are yet to open their medal account in the ongoing Summer Games. Saina also conceded a lot of points on misjudgement and was not able to retrieve once the shuttle moved behind her.
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Garcia and Mladenovic joined forces at the beginning of the season with the Oympics in mind but were knocked out in the first round last week in a tense match where they had issues with their clothing as they were not informed by the French Tennis Federation that they had to wear the same coloured clothing.
