I must admit – I have been sneering at the Winter Olympics a bit , because it seems to be a white-wash – if you get my (snow?) drift. Skiing , curling ,luges etc  do not seem to encourage diversity.

The US Figure skating team of Meryl Davis and Charlie White , defending US champs, placed second at the time of writing with this rollicking Bollywood routine and made me happy .I absolutely loved the costumes.

SeeBollywood routine via NBC.com

BBC’s Against the Odds series features an Indian athlete who made it to Olympics in the face of overwhelming odds. [BBC]

The desi Rocky Balboas
img: via Hindu

Most professional sports in India, with the lone exception of cricket, offer little incentives for budding youngsters to follow that sport. Boxing is one such neglected sport in India. So pretty much any athlete not belonging to cricket probably belongs in the “Against the Odds” series.

The Indian boxing squad as a whole deserves special mention. [Hindu]

For starters, India has an unprecedented number of boxers qualify for the games.

“Not for nothing have five boxers made the qualification this time. It is India’s biggest ever boxing squad to the Olympics,” argues Chief coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu.

The qualifying boxers are no scrubs either.

One of the most experienced boxers in the squad, Akhil Kumar (54kg) is known for his aggression and guile as well as his gold winning feat in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. Despite nurturing a wrist injury, he qualified for his second Olympics at the first Asian qualifying event in Thailand.

Vijender (75 kg), was a silver medallist at the last Commonwealth Games and had won a bronze in the Doha Asian Games.

But he lifted his performance to beat the Athens Olympics gold medallist Bakhtiyar Artayev of Kazakhstan in the President’s Cup meet in Chinese Taipei.

His recent gold winning performance in a strong field at the Chemistry Cup in Germany is another proof of the boxer’s ability.

Jitender Kumar (51 kg), A.L. Lakra (57 kg) and Dinesh Kumar (81 kg) also hold a lot of promise and have earned laurels at National and Asian level.

Vijender, the boxer featured on BBC’s “Against the Odds”, is also a police officer and a model, who has been featured among other places in the Indian Edition of Maxim.

The coach is pretty high on Akhil and Vijender.

Though Sandhu backs all the boxers in the squad, he agrees that Akhil and Vijender stand the best chance and are favoured to beat any boxer on their day. “Akhil is a confident boxer, very determined and strong willed. His sharp hooks and power-packed punches are world class. He is an athlete who has the rare ability to come back strongly from a trailing position,” Sandhu says.

Analysing Vijender, the chief coach says, “He is a cool boy who watches his opponent and tries to beat his strong points. His straight punches are deadly.”

The entire boxing unit seems to be confident about their chances at Beijing.

Whether their confidence is justified or misplaced will be determined by the number of Indian pugilists on the medals podium. Stay tuned.

Bhaichung Bhutia – the captain of the Indian football ( aka soccer) team – has made a career out of – pardon the mixed sports metaphor – swimming against the tide.

Bhutia stands up for himself
img: via Telegraph India

After all he is a sports hero to millions in India- a country where cricket (and spoilt-brat cricketers!) are a national obsession. At sixteen, he made his professional debut in the East Bengal club. At 22, he played for Bury F.C in England. When folks were calling for his retirement, he scored 3 goals in 5 matches at the ONGC Nehru cup tournament to prove that he still has it. (link)

On April 2nd Bhutia performed yet another heroic act- in my opinion -when he become one of the first athletes to refuse to carry the Olympic torch as it wends its way across India this month.(link)

“This is my way of standing by the people of Tibet and their struggle,” he was quoted as saying in The Times Of India. “I abhor violence in any form.”
He added: “I sympathise (sic)with the Tibetan cause. I have many friends in Sikkim who follow Buddhism.”

Bhutia has been careful to declare his decision a purely personal one.

Predictably, many fellow sportspersons have not supported his decision ( link)

Read the rest of this entry »