Of Olympics and Predictions

The Olympics is around the corner. It is highly likely that China is going to (finally) overtake USA in the medals tally. Last time, China won 32 golds. It might win at least 40 this year around.
On the downside, I am expecting at least 3 athletes from the USA to end up in a dope scandal and at least 1 from China.

Interestingly, a list of "Medal density", i.e. the number of medals won divided by the population of that country (unit is Parts per million or ppm) gives the top 5 countries as The Bahamas, Norway, Australia, Cuba and Hungary! USA is ranked 34th. Also the medal tally divided by GDP ranking yields, Georgia, Ethiopia, Cuba, Jamaica and Uzbekistan! Now there's something that tells you that a country need not be rich in people/resources to produce medalists! Just two or three good ones or a strong program in a particular sport.

India first participated in Olympics in 1900 in Paris. The country was represented by Norman Pritchard, an Anglo Indian. Mr. Pritchard was holidaying in Paris during that time. He bagged two silver medals in 200m dash and 200m hurdles. (How's THAT for a productive holiday?!?).

One of the most consistent medal winners for India has been the Men's Hockey team. At one time, 7 successive Olympic Golds were won by the team right from 1928 to 1956. The Goals scored by versus against in all these matches was a very Federer-esque 178 - 7. Of course they also won two more Golds in 1964 and 1980 apart from 2 silvers and a bronze. With such a rich history, you have to wonder whether bad management, apathy of the masses or just the drying up of talent has brought Indian hockey to a pathetic state of not even being able to qualify for the current Olympics.

We are yet to win an individual Olympic Gold, having won 2 silvers in Athletics, Bronzes for wrestling, a bronze in tennis, a bronze in weightlifting, a bronze in shooting and a lone silver in last time in Athens.

Not that what I say really matters, but my predictions for this year?
Archery - 1 medal
Shooting - 2 medals
Boxing - 1 medal
Tennis - 0 medals (and I hope that will be the end of the Lee-Hesh story, for the love of tennis!)

And for everyone who would like to know, here is the list of the Indian Contingent. For everyone's information, I had to look for this in a news archive, the Indian Olympic Association does not even have a website (this is the so called address : www.olympic.ind.in ) , let alone putting up names of athletes online to look for sponsors. And we wonder why we don't win medals!

Archery: Dola Banerjee, Pranitha Vardhineni, Bombayala Devi, Mangal Singh Champia.

Athletics: Anju Bobby George, Krishna Poonia, Harwant Kaur, Preeja Sreedharan, Manjeet Kaur, Chitra K. Soman, Sini Jose. M.R. Poovamma, Mandeep Kaur, J.J. Shoba, Susmita Singha Roy, G.G. Pramila, Vikas Gowda, Renjith Maheswary, Surendra Singh, K. Mridula, S. Geetha.

Badminton: Anup Sridhar, Saina Nehwal.

Boxing: Jitender, Akhil Kumar, A.L. Lakra, Vijender, Dinesh Kumar.

Judo: Khumujam Tombi Devi, Divya.

Rowing: Bajrang Lal Thakar, Devender Kumar Khandwal, Manjeet Singh.

Shooting: Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Mansher Singh, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Gagan Narang, Abhinav Bindra, Samaresh Jung, Sanjeev Rajput, Anjali Bhagwat, Avneet Kaur Sidhu.

Swimming: Virdhawal Khade, Ankur Poseria, Sandeep Sejwal, Rehan Poncha.

Table tennis: Sharath Kamal, Neha Agarwal.

Tennis: Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Sania Mirza, Sunitha Rao.

Wrestling: Sushil Kumar, Yogeshwar Dutt, Rajeev Tomar.

Weightlifting: L. Monika Devi.

Yachting: N.S. Johal.

Berhael