Tag Archive for ‘Beijing Olympics’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Beijing Olympics'

Indian shooter’s road to Beijing

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on August 25, 2008

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He took India by storm by winning the country’s first-ever individual Olympic Gold. At 26, Abhinav Bindra’s road to Beijing was a personal battle that he won convincingly. In conversation with Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24×7’s Walk the Talk, the ace shooter talks about the sport, his life, and the years of hard work. From the Indian Express:

Tell us about the loneliness of the shooter. We’ve all heard the loneliness of a long-distance runner.

Yes, it’s a quiet sport. It’s almost meditative because you are competing against your own self and that’s it. You’re competing against others, but the performance depends on the competition against your own self. So it’s a quiet and lonely battle.

And you don’t know what others are doing, because on one command all of you are almost shooting together.

Yes. You get to know after the shot is fired, but you shoot against yourself.

So tell me what goes on at the deck point. Who are you talking to when you are by yourself at the range?

When you are competing, there are so many doubts and you are all the time fighting against yourself. A part of you just doesn’t want to believe that it’s gonna happen and, you’re just trying to be quiet and that chatter going on in your head, and you are trying to shut up and focus on the job at hand.

Three medalists provide glimpse of a new India

India’s three gold medals represent vastly different Indias that today exist side by side, and the intensity of the new aspirations of young Indians. Somini Sengupta in International Herald Tribune:

Sushil Kumar

Vijender Kumar

One is the son of a prosperous businessman with an Olympic-size shooting range in his backyard. Another grew up in a dusty village, sparring with his brother for use of a shared family bicycle. A third spent most of his youth in a musty, mouse-infested room at a wrestling camp here in the capital.

In the last two weeks, each won a medal for his country in Beijing, making it India’s best performance at an Olympics.

Many in this country see the victories as being emblematic of a rise of a new India. Actually, they represent vastly different Indias that today exist side by side and the intensity of the new aspirations of young Indians up and down the social ladder.

For Afghanistan, a first ever Olympic medal

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on August 22, 2008

in Afghanistan

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By Associated Press:

Beijing: In Rohullah Nikpai’s war-torn country, fighting is a part of life. Living in tough conditions is a given. Training for the Olympics is a luxury few can afford, or even imagine.

But Nikpai has proven it can be done: On Wednesday he won Afghanistan’s first Olympic medal ever. “I hope this will send a message of peace to my country after 30 years of war,” Nikpai said after winning the bronze in the men’s under 58-kilogram taekwondo event.

The victory brought immediate congratulations from President Hamid Karzai. “The president personally called Rohullah Nikpai and congratulated him for this achievement,” presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said.

For his accomplishment, Nikpai will be given a house at the government’s expense, Hamidzada said. Nikpai, he said, serves as a “role model for many other Afghans.”

Why do some countries win more Olympic medals?

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on August 18, 2008

in India and Sport

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A population of over one billion has so far won only one medal at the Beijing Olympics. Why can’t India do better? In a recent paper in the Bombay-published journal Economic and Political Weekly, Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund, two academics at Duke University in the United States, say the problem for India is the number of people who can effectively participate in sports”. Nearly 8 million children suffer from malnutrition and more than 250 million live below the poverty line. The authors contend that social mobility is the key to countries’ success at the Olympics. [via The Guardian]

Abhinav Bindra with his Gold medal at Beijing Olympics

Compared to its share in the world’s population, India’s share of Olympic medals is abysmally low. In the 2004 Olympic Games, for example, India won only one medal. Turkey, which has less than one-tenth of India’s population, won 10 times as many medals, and Thailand, which has roughly 6 per cent of India’s population, won eight times as many medals.

India’s one-sixth share in the world’s population translated into a 1/929 share in 2004 Olympic medals. While Australia won 2.46 medals per one-million population and Cuba won 2.39 medals per one-million population, India brought up the bottom of this international chart, winning a mere 0.0009 medals per one-million population. Nigeria, next lowest, had 18 times this number, winning 0.015 medals per one-million population.1 Why does the average Indian count for so little? What prevents the translation of India’s huge number of people into a proportionate – or even near-proportionate – number of Olympic medals? The gross domestic product certainly matters, as previous analyses have indicated [Bernard and Busse 2004], but something else also seems to be making a difference, given that Cuba, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kenya and Uzbekistan – countries not known for having high average incomes – have won many more medals than India, despite having a far smaller national population. Why do 10 million Indians win less than one-hundredth of one Olympic medal, while 10 million Uzbeks won 4.7 Olympic medals?

The glory of just showing up

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on August 16, 2008

in Sport

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For many small nations, the Olympic experience lasts only a few minutes. Barry Newman in The Wall Street Journal:

Athletes from the Maldives at Beijing Olympics.

Aishath Reesha, a 19-year-old 800-meter runner, had just finished practice at the Chaoyang Sports Center, a proletarian track sequestered from the Olympic mobs. She sat with her back to a recently whitewashed wall, an ice-pack on her neck, and watched as a French sprinter sped past.

“We can’t compete with people from other worlds,” she said in a whisper. “I’m not scared. My goal is to better my personal best.”

Ms. Reesha is from Maldives, a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean with a population of 379,000, per capita income of $4,600, and a serious worry about being washed away. Her personal best in the 800-meter race is 2:32.97; the Olympic record is more than 38 seconds faster.

“We are not qualified for the Olympics,” said her coach, whose name is Ahmed Faail. He was standing over Ali Shareef, his 100-meter runner, who was on flat on his back with a leg in the air. Mr. Faail was helping him work out a kink. “In the heats there are people with a lot of experience,” he said. “We will not be winning heats.”

And the winning anthem is…

Published

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on August 15, 2008

in Music

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It took a month to track down every one of the 205 national anthems that might be heard at this year’s Olympic games – and Alex Marshall sat through all four and a half hours of them. It’s time to reveal the handful that actually do their countries proud. From The Guardian:

It is 8pm on a Tuesday evening, and I am busy annoying the Olympic associations of various Caribbean countries by asking them which national anthem will play if one of their athletes wins gold in Beijing. “You want to know what?” asks the receptionist at the Meat Market – a butcher that happens to share the same phone line as the Virgin Islands Olympic Committee.

“I just want to know if your athletes would listen to the US’s anthem or that of the Virgin Islands.”

“I don’t know, son,” she says. “All I know is we ain’t gonna win no gold medal.”

I have spent the last few weeks making calls like this because I have been trying to track down every single national anthem that might be heard at this year’s Olympics. All 205 of them. My plan was to listen to all the anthems – the instrumental versions that you hear at the Olympics – with a music journalist’s ear, and rank them; that way I would know who to cheer for. There is no other fair way to compare countries musically. National anthems are the same the world over – a short, classical piece meant to stir up pride. They have got to be boisterous and bombastic, with a tune simple enough that you can shout it whether drunk in a stadium, or drunk in front of the TV.

Nepal and Bangladesh’s anthems make the top ten:

Nepal: Hundreds of Flowers

Adopted last year, when Nepal’s House of Representatives threw out the old, western-style anthem. This folk melody on strings and hand drums sounds like slowed-down bhangra. Shame it’s probably unplayable by brass, so unlikely to be heard outside Nepal.

Bangladesh: My Golden Bengal

A wonderful anthem that sounds like it was written for a stroll along the Seine. It really needs Jacques Brel. Which is probably not what composer Rabindranath Tagore had in mind.

Click here for more and the top ten anthems list. There are also links to YouTube where you can listen to the anthems:

No rights = No Olympics

Published

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on April 11, 2008

in Sport

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In an open letter, Human Rights Watch has asked world leaders to stay away from the Olympic Games, unless China agrees to make key human rights improvements

World leaders should defer accepting invitations to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing until the Chinese government makes key human rights improvements, Human Rights Watch said in an open letter today. In order to secure leaders’ participation, the Chinese government should allow an independent international investigation into events in Tibetan areas since March 10, lift restrictions on the press nationwide, stop jailing dissidents, and increase pressure on Sudan.

To win its bid to host the 2008 Games, which open on August 8, the Chinese government made both broad commitments to improving its human rights record, and specific pledges to improve media access in advance of the Games. The participation by heads of state and government at the opening or closing ceremonies, which is crucially important to the Chinese government, remains a key point of leverage to press for positive changes in the coming months.
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[Pic: Tibet activists hang up banners on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco. K White, Reuters]

Torch troubles

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on April 9, 2008

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The BBC’s sports editor Mihir Bose on the discord and anguish that the Olympic torch is leaving in its wake

The Olympic torch, meant to promote peace and harmony is now producing the sort of discord and anguish that I have rarely seen in an Olympic gathering, especially with a Games only four months away.

By this time, and with Beijing’s preparations in terms of stadiums and facilities having gone so well, the men and women who run the Olympics movement should have had every reason to feel satisfied.

They have taken the Olympics to a new frontier; the world’s most populated country.

Putting faces on 5 victims of Tibetan riots

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on March 27, 2008

in Tibet

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From The New York Times:

Shanghai: In life, the five young women who burned to death in a Chinese clothing store during rioting in Tibet on March 14 were not the types who would make headlines.

One received permission from her family to follow her fiancé to Lhasa; another sent home most of her wages to support 13 relatives; several sent text messages in the minutes before they died warning loved ones to stay indoors as violence erupted.

In death, though, the women are being treated as martyrs. The Chinese government has been using their deaths to support its version of what happened on “3/14,” when Tibet saw its worst day of violence in 20 years. In that version, broadcast by state-controlled media, ethnic Tibetans took to Lhasa’s streets, unprovoked, burning and looting shops that were owned by Han Chinese.

Human Rights Watch speaks up for Tibet

Human Rights Watch has asked the government of Nepal to stop its arbitrary detention and ‘intimidation tactics’ against peaceful Tibetan protestors, including threats to deport them to China. Read that report here.

Meanwhile, a note circulated by ’some Chinese intellectuals’, including dissidents and writers, has called for an independent United Nations investigation into Tibet. The note supports the Dalai Lama’s appeal for peace and includes 11 other suggestions for solving the Tibet situation.

Finally, HRW has called upon China to investigate its crackdown before the Olympic torch passes through Tibet. It has asked the government to account for those dead or missing and it wants Lhasa to be reopened to media and to monitors.

The Olympic torch, which was lit today in Olympia, Greece, should not go through Tibet unless the Chinese government agrees to an independent investigation into the recent unrest in Tibetan areas, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Olympic torch is set to pass through the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on June 20-21. Chinese government officials have confirmed their plans to continue despite the ongoing protests and crackdown across ethnic Tibetan areas.

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For a backgrounder and a complete HRW list of Tibet reports, go here.

[PIC: Monks and protestors rally on a street in Labrang, Gansu province, March 14. Reuters]

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