First Day Disappointments For Indians In Summer Youth Olympics

The inaugural Summer Youth Olympics, officially named Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG), started in the state-city of Singapore with the opening ceremony being held on 14th August 2010. With the participation of 3531 athletes between 14 and 18 years of age from 204 national Olympic committees, this is the largest event for the youth in recent history. 26 sports are included in the event making up a total of 184 events.

The Indian contingent in this event consists of 32 athletes who are participating in 13 of the events. The events in which Indians are participating are

1. Aquatics (swimming)
2. Archery
3. Athletics
4. Badminton
5. Basketball
6. Boxing
7. Judo
8. Rowing
9. Shooting
10. Table Tennis
11. Tennis
12. Weightlifting
13. Wrestling

The recent history of Indian sports show that our players have shown a lot of talents in most of the sporting events. Though the youth success has mostly not been converted properly in the big stages. So the we can expect to hear at least some good news coming our way fro Singapore.

FIRST DAY DISSAPPOINTMENT:

However, the Indians youngsters, those who have participated in their events on the first day have mostly disappointed. The only ray of hope in the first day was Haseena Sunil Kumar Prannoy in boys’ badminton. Sunil won both of his group C matches defeating Calerbout Lucas (France) and Coke Dennis (Jamaica) both by the margin of 2-0. If he wins his last match against Keophiacham PhetPhanom of Laos, to be played on Monday, he will qualify for the quarter finals where he will face one of 7 others who qualify by winning their groups. However, the other Indian in the same event, Bhamidipati Sairaneeth lost his first match against local opponent Huang Chao by a margin of 1-2.

In the group A match of boys’ basketball India lost to Puerto Rico by a margin of 15-33. In rowing, Junior women’s pair team finished 4th and Junior men’s pair team finished 5th. The only Indian to participate in a final event, Matsa Santoshi, in women’s 48 kg weightlifting, finished dismal 5th.

After the end of first day, China is leading the table with 3 golds while Azerbaijan (2 golds) and Russia (1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze) are at second and third positions respectively.