India announces squad for Olympics

New Delhi: A 57-member squad will represent India at next month’s Beijing Olympics, hoping to better the country’s dismal record at the four-yearly sporting extravaganza.

The contingent will not include a men’s hockey team – India’s flag-bearers at past Olympics – after they failed to qualify for the Games for the first time ever. But officials sounded confident India’s shooters, archers, boxers and tennis players will more than compensate. “Hopefully we well get some medals this time,” Suresh Kalmadi, president of the Indian Olympic Association, said at a press conference. “Our shooters are on the top of the list and they are raring to go. We also have great hopes from the boxers and the archery team. “Tennis stars Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza are also capable of throwing a surprise,” he said.

India, a fast-growing economy with ambitions to host the Olympics, has just four individual medals to show for its efforts at the Games, the first one a bronze by wrestler Khasaba Jadhav in Helsinki in 1952. The last three Games produced a medal each with Paes winning a bronze at Atlanta in 1996, women’s weightlifter Karnam Malleswari a bronze in Sydney four years later and shooter Rajyavardhan Rathore a silver at Athens in 2004. India’s world champion in trap shooting, Manavjit Singh Sandhu, also sounded upbeat about the country’s chances of a better show but asked fans not to burden them with too many expectations. “Earlier Olympians were plucked from the grounds, dusted off and instructed to win medals at the Olympics,” he said. “This is not the case now. We are the best you have, be proud of us and support us even if we fail.

“We promise that we will not return from the Games with even a drop of blood in us as all of it would have been spilled in training and on the ranges,” he said to loud applause from officials and media. afp

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