India related Olympic stories:
Round II: The Paes-Bhupathi “Will We Play Doubles Together?” Saga
Olympians to Watch: Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes

Photo source: beijing2008

Not surprisingly, Leander Paes — a bronze medalist during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — poured his heart out “saying that he was hurt” by Bhupathi’s conduct.

According to our source: An emotionally charged Paes sounded more pained at the way Bhupathi has gone about the whole business of teaming up with him and also by the latter’s unwillingness to discuss the problems with him directly.

Despite the current hard feelings between the two, Paes is still hoping that a Paes-Bhupathi doubles team will materialize in Beijing:

“At the end of the day, we will be hurting ourselves by deflecting our focus from the goal, thus putting additional pressure to get a medal. There is no team better than Leander and Bhupathi to get an Olympic medal.”

As we stated earlier, the two — having been ranked as the world’s number one doubles team — are India’s best hope for an Olympic medal.

RELATED:
Olympians to Watch: Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes

Will these two settle their differences in time to go for the gold? Let’s wait for the next chapter.

PHOTO SOURCE: ibnlive.com

After all, isn’t the criteria for the inclusion of an Olympic sport only goes like this:

[F]or the Summer Games, only sports/disciplines widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in at least 40 countries and on three continents may be included.

Surely yoga is widely practiced in more than 75 countries as well as in three continents. In fact, we’d like to think that it is more practiced and more popular than trampoline and all those rowing events. And it’s a very Olympian sport too. Look at the photos below (courtesy of photopostcards.com). Can you name an Olympic sport that is as challenging as this? Seriously. Can you?

Anyways, here’s an excerpt from a story by John Krich about the campaign of a group to have yoga in the Olympics:

Bidding to host the 2020 Summer Olympics hasn’t yet begun, but the Indian Olympic Association has proclaimed it plans a pitch for New Delhi.

That’s encouraging news for a small movement in India that’s looking to raise the country’s greatest contribution to the world of fitness to a higher podium: They want yoga in the Olympics.

Competitive yoga? It isn’t as great a stretch as it seems.
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To Mr. Gopal, the Olympics case is clear. The Korean martial art taekwondo is in the Olympics, he notes — it began as a demonstration sport at the Seoul Olympics of 1988 and became a full event 12 years later — though it has far fewer participants than yoga. And that’s just the start of his list of Olympic events that yoga surpasses.

“If rhythmic gymnastics can be included, why not yoga?” he asks.

Why not indeed? It will be a popular sport too. We think it will be as popular as gymnastics and swimming so television networks will be happy because it will raise their ratings.

Also, of all the sports out there, we think only yoga has the real potential to bring about peace to the whole world. And isn’t that the goal of the Olympic movement — to achieve peace through sports? So come on, Olympic powers-that-be, you should let the yogis in.

Now we have, Indian Olympians also feeling slighted. From Sportstar:

[T]he sole criterion concerning the selection of a sports personality says, the person should “be distinguished for contributions to the Olympic Movement or for extraordinary performance at past Olympic Games.”

Three such personalities were available in Delhi, but they were not called. Sriram Singh, one of the finest athletes India has produced, a finalist in the 800 metres in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was hoping to get a call, but it never came. Sriram still holds the National record of 1:45.77 that he set in the final in Montreal.

At the same Games, Hari Chand set another National record, that of 28:48.72 in the 10,000 metres that has remained intact. He too was ignored. Both Sriram and Hari Chand are also double gold medal winners in the Asian Games. Then there was R. S. Bhola, the hockey veteran of the 1956 Melbourne Games where India won the gold and Rome Olympics where India took the silver.

Another athlete who was available in Delhi and who could easily have been accommodated was Praveen Kumar. The small screen’s Bheem is a double gold medallist in discus in the Asian Games and a silver winner in hammer in the Commonwealth Games.

There were others too who could have been included, Prakash Padukone, Ramanathan Krishnan, Ramesh Krishnan, V. Baskaran, Pargat Singh, Ashok Kumar, Mohammed Shahid, P. K. Banerjee, Chuni Goswami, Michael Ferreira and Pankaj Advani to name just a few among those who were ignored.

Hah! What about that Indian Olympic Assocation (IOA)? How could you have botched this one? With that many ex-Olympians to choose from, seems like you didn’t make good choices at all. Not cool, IOA, not cool.

Bawa, who was a member of the team under Balbir Singh which went on to win the gold medal in the Olympics, held at London in 1948, had gone to Ambala to visit his daughter where he breathed his last.

He was born on February 12, 1923, at Lahore (Pakistan), he joined the Punjab Police as Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) in 1949 in undivided Punjab and retired in 1981 as the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Haryana.

Bawa captained the Punjab hockey team in 1952 & also led the Indian Hockey team to play Test matches against Japan. He also had the honour of assisting Brig Dalip Singh in the Torch relay from Jawalamukhi to Delhi for the 1960 National Games.

Not unexpectedly, Tibetan exiles were there to protest. Not unexpectedly, they were arrested by police authorities.

Next stop for the Olympic torch, Thailand.