Tag Archive for ‘Olympics’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Olympics'

Kajra Re on ice

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on January 20, 2010

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From The New York Times:

American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White thought their Indian-themed original dance program could be popular.

Little did they know it would become an international sensation, thanks to YouTube.

A video of their program, from the Rostlecom Cup last October, has drawn more than 220,000 hits.

White and Davis, the 2009 Grand Prix champions as well as the reigning national champions, have received e-mails from fans in India and South Asia, who are pleased with their routine. They have had interview requests from Indian and Indian-American media outlets, wanting to discuss the program. More:

[Below, the original from the Bollywood movie]

In India, women see boxing as a way up

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on August 26, 2009

in India and Sport

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Somini Sengupta from Trivandrum in the New York Times:

Mangte Chungneijang Merykom

The girls punched hard.

From across India they came to this big, steamy government-run gym. Before entering the boxing ring, they bowed their heads to the floor, as though entering a temple. A sweet-shop owner’s daughter let loose a right hook. A construction worker’s daughter leaned against the rope, streams of sweat dripping from her face. Bouncing, ducking, like a grasshopper on speed, was a short girl from Calcutta with close-set eyes; she had forsaken her sister’s wedding for a chance to come here and fight. The thud of glove against glove echoed against the cavernous walls.

In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.

The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India was among the countries pushing to break the gender bar.

“This is my dream come true,” Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, 27, India’s most acclaimed boxer, better known as Mary Kom, said this week. More:

Bindra, the silent killer

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on August 23, 2008

in Sport

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In his blog Shunya, Namit Arora tells us why, despite the national euphoria, Olympic medals leave him unmoved.

Until Beijing, the last gold India had won at the Olympics was in 1980; no Indian had ever won an individual gold. This dismal record has been a source of shame for countless Indians. Every four years, a puny contingent would trudge to a foreign city, crash out, and the question would arise again: Why do Indians fare so badly? Answers would again span the whole spectrum: economics, culture, genetics, climate, politics, cricket, and more.

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?

And the winning anthem is…

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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:

India’s golden boy

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on August 11, 2008

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India’s ace shooter, the 26-year-old Abhinav Bindra has won a first-ever individual Olympic Gold medal for his country. At the Beijing Shooting Range, Bindra won the gold in the 10m Air Rifle event by scoring 700.5 points in the final.

The last time India won a gold was in the 1980 Moscow Olympics when the hockey team lifted the medal.

Anirban Roy posts details on Abhinav’s victory in the Reuters blog:

Abhinav Bindra won India’s first ever individual Olympic gold medal on Monday with a thrilling come-from-behind victory in the men’s 10m air rifle.

Bindra had been fourth after qualifying but had a brilliant final round and even hit a near perfect 10.8 on his last shot to pull in front of Henri Hakkinen of Finland, who dropped to bronze with a poor final shot of 9.7.

That allowed China’s Zhu Qinan, the defending Olympic champion and heavy favourite, to pass him on his final shot and win the silver medal.

“It’s just great,” Bindra told Reuters just before climbing on to the podium.

Check out Abhinav’s blog, Abhinav Bindra’s Road to Beijing at: http://abhinavbindra.blogspot.com/ to leave him a message of congratualations, or post a comment here and we’ll forward it to him.

Back home in India, there’s euphoria in college canteens and office cubicles, reports IANS (via Hindustan Times)

As the national anthem played and the Indian tricolour rose high when Abhinav Bindra received India’s first individual Olympic gold medal in Beijing on Monday, euphoria erupted in college canteens and office cubicles back home.

Anjan Katna, who works with Emergent Ventures in Gurgaon in the capital’s outskirts, said the entire office broke into loud applause as soon as they saw the news about Bindra’s success being flashed on TV channels in the morning.

A Doon School alumn, Abhinav Bindra has been profiled briefly in Hindustan Times here or check his Wiki profile here.

And here’s the YouTube clip of Bindra receiving his medal

The world’s worst Olympians

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on July 29, 2008

in Sport

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Foreign Policy lists the five countries with the worst Olympics medals record. Read, and weep.

India

Medal count: 17

Score card: Think of India as the Washington Nationals of Olympic sport. India is by far the worst-performing Olympic country—no matter how you slice it. It’s not for lack of trying. A games participant since 1900, India still ranks behind Nigeria, a country with an economy one twentieth India’s size, in total medals. The country’s athletic ineptitude is so profound that a parliamentarian called for two minutes of silence to “lament the demise of Indian sports” after the squad failed to win any medals in Barcelona in 1992.

What’s wrong? Few sports venues (roughly 33 stadiums and sports complexes for 1.1 billion people), a lack of school sports programs, stingy government funding, and a narrow talent base. The result? A country whose most celebrated claim to Olympic greatness is “The Flying Sikh,” a track-and-field star who broke hearts by placing fourth at the 1960 Rome Games. It’s not that Indians can’t excel at athletics. Since 1933, the state of Punjab has hosted its own “rural Olympics,” where competitors vie for glory in tug of war, mule-cart racing, sack lifting, tent pegging, and various feats of strength. And there’s hope in the air. Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal has established a trust to fund athletes’ training and medical care and “put India firmly on the medal grid” for 2012.

An ancient sport bows, but doesn’t bend in Bhutan

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on May 5, 2008

in Bhutan

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Archery is the national sport in the Himalayan kingdom. Bamboo and reed have given way to fiberglass, but the passion hasn’t dimmed and the insults still fly. From the Chicago Tribune:

Dorji, a house painter with close-cropped black hair, draws his bowstring, hooks his thumb on his cheek and takes aim at what appears an impossible target: an 11-inch-wide slip of wood dug into the soil 460 feet away — deeper than center field.

He lets his finger slip and the arrow streaks down the field, raising a puff of dust when it hits the earthen bank just behind the target. He has missed.

“His wife keeps beating him! That’s why he’s getting weaker and weaker!” taunt his friends, gathered in a grove of willows along the rocky Pachu River. Dorji, 47, is accustomed to the insults that are a staple of archery in Bhutan, and just ignores them.

[Picture: Bhutanese Olympic archers Dorji Dolma, left, and her husband, Tashi Tshering, practice earlier this year in Thimpu, the capital.]

A new torch controversy: the battle for Everest

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on May 2, 2008

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As the Olympic flame makes its way to the top of the world’s highest mountain, China’s repressive tactics have sparked fresh criticism. Andrew Buncombe in The Independent, UK:

William Holland was only thinking of the photograph. When he got to the top of Everest he planned to take the rolled-up flag saying “Free Tibet” from his rucksack, pose for posterity with the banner as a backdrop and then roll it away again before starting back down. He was not looking to make a scene.

But that is exactly what transpired. Someone in the group he was climbing with informed the Nepalese authorities of Mr Holland’s flag. When he reached Everest Base Camp he was ordered from the mountain and told to go straight to Kathmandu. From there he was deported from Nepal with an order not to return for two years.

The 26-year-old US climber’s treatment at the hands of the Nepalese authorities is just one indication of how the world’s highest mountain has in recent days become engulfed by the politics and controversy surrounding China and its relationship with Tibet.

Everest Olympic torch diary – 5

BBC’s Jonah Fisher joins the Olympic torch for the high point of its trip – on Mount Everest. In the fifth of his diary instalments, he takes a tour of Everest base camp.

On Wednesday we had a treat. After lengthy negotiations with the border police our minders secured us permission to visit Everest base camp 5km from our media village.

With strict instructions not to film the numerous military trucks on the way, we were driven to the tented camp that forms the command centre for both the climbing team as well as the official Chinese media.

Click here for more and for his previous instalments:

A flashpoint called Tibet

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on April 28, 2008

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What India is passing off as a moderate China policy is actually aberrant behaviour, writes Bharat Karnad, professor at the Centre for Policy Research, in Mint.

The barbed wire barricade outside the Chinese embassy ought to become a permanent fixture of New Delhi’s landscape. It will remind the Indian people and their government about what it is that, at the core, separates India from China: freedom.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, has prostrated himself in a kow-tow to the zhung guo (“the central kingdom”) – calling China India’s “greatest neighbour”, deliberately leaving Tawang out of his official visit to Arunachal Pradesh and, as if to confirm this country’s tributary status, preventing anti-China protests in Arunachal Pradesh, hounding and gagging the poor Tibetan community in exile and, after declaring India would not tolerate Chinese minders, allowing Chinese cops to trot alongside the Olympics torch carriers and the contingent of army commandos for the short stretch the “flame” of fair play was exposed to the Indian “public”.

I’m proud to carry the Olympic torch despite Tibet

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on March 30, 2008

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Duncan Mackay in The Observor, UK:

A few weeks ago, when my friends and colleagues found out I had been the only newspaper journalist to be asked to carry the Olympic torch when it comes to London on 6 April (a traditional treat for a writer), they were all pleased for me. Now the same people are asking me if I am going to pull out in protest at China’s human-rights record and the recent events in Tibet.

While I am appalled at the oppression imposed on Tibet by China, its support of the regime in Darfur and its sickening record on human rights, the answer is no. I respect people’s rights to protest peacefully along the route and I sincerely hope their valiant efforts pay off in forcing the Chinese government to change. But it is not the Olympics that have let them down – it is the world’s politicians.

In Afghanistan, a young girl braves abuse to follow Olympic dream

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on March 22, 2008

in Afghanistan and Society

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Nick Meo from Kabul in The Times, UK:

Many of the athletes at Beijing will have had to overcome obstacles to get there but only one Olympian is likely to have had her training schedule dogged by a sexist hate campaign.

As if the Olympic team of Afghanistan does not have enough trouble with run-down facilities and a woeful shortage of funds, its sole woman competitor has had to prepare herself mentally for the biggest challenge of her life while dealing with sinister midnight telephone calls, the open derision of her neighbours and even police harassment.

The attitude of the officers who tried to arrest her this week was nothing new for Mehboba Andyar, 19, who lives in a slum in Kabul.

Dalai Lama fears bloodshed in Tibet

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on March 16, 2008

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In an interview with the BBC, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, said he feared there would be more deaths unless Beijing changed its policies towards Tibet, which it has ruled since invading in 1950. “It has become really very, very tense. Now today and yesterday, the Tibetan side is determined. The Chinese side also equally determined. So that means, the result: killing, more suffering,” he said.

An Associated Press report from Beijing says China blocked access to YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos of recent protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

“Cultural genocide”

Reuters reports from Dharamsala:

The Dalai Lama called on Sunday for an investigation into China’s tough response to protests in Tibet, and whether it was deliberate “cultural genocide”. The comments from Tibet’s spiritual leader came as police and troops locked down Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, two days after street protests against Chinese rule that the region’s government-in-exile said had killed 80 people.

“Whether the Chinese government admits or not, there is a problem. The problem is the nation with ancient cultural heritage is actually facing serious dangers,” he told a news conference at his base of Dharamsala in northern India.

China shuts down Mount Everest

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on March 14, 2008

in China and Tibet

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Jane Macartney reports from Beijing in The Times, UK:

China has closed Mount Everest to climbers amid fears that activists could disrupt the Olympic torch ascent of the world’s highest peak. The announcement that Chinese authorities had halted access to its side of the mountain that straddles the border between Tibet and Nepal came amid reports of a third day of protests by Tibetan monks around Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

In a letter to expedition companies, the China Tibet Mountaineering Association said: “Concern over climbing activities, crowded climbing routes and increasing environmental pressures will cause potential safety problems in Qomalangma \ areas.” It added: “We are not able to accept your expedition, so please postpone your climbing.”

Carrying the Olympic torch to the 29,035ft (8,840m) summit has been hailed by the Games host city, Beijing, as one of the grandest feats of the event. Running the relay through one of China’s most restive regions, where many Tibetans chafe under Beijing’s rule, also risks politicising the Games.

From the Website, mounteverest.net:

China’s worst nightmare for the Olympic torch event is not crowding or safety – the mountain will after all re-open after the torch. China’s worst nightmare is a picture of the flame on Everest summit, alongside a climber holding up a “Free Tibet” sign.

This explains why the officials have tried to convince Nepal to close the peak also from the south side during the Chinese Everest climb. But why would such a sign be dangerous? Why fear the two words “free Tibet” so much?

Nepal, too, puts Everest off limits

From The New York Times:

Come early May, the darkness and the hurricane-force winds will fade and in the lambent daylight a calm will fall on the highest place in the world. Mountain climbers await this interlude, the Everest weather window, when nature leaves its great summit open for a two-week spell before the monsoons come.

Those who aspire to the 29,028-foot peak of Mount Everest, who have their flights arranged and their guides paid, sought to salvage their plans Friday as international politics began to intrude on the yearly ritual.

The government of Nepal, gatekeeper of the mountain’s popular southern face, has disclosed plans to block climbers’ ascents for the first 10 days of May, at the request of China.

Continental divide: hockey sans frontiers

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on March 11, 2008

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India crashes out of the Olympics, for the first time in 80 years, after going down 0-2 to Great Britain in the final of the qualifying competition in Santiago, Chile. Pakistan’s hopes, however, rest on a team that is a blend of youth and experience.

Jaydeep Basu in The Telegraph has the sad Indian story

Indian hockey has been chucked out of the Olympics before the country could say Chak De! India.

A smarter Britain slammed the Beijing door shut on the eight-time gold medallists, who failed to qualify for the first time since they debuted on the Olympic stage 80 years ago.The hour of darkness descended last night in Santiago, Chile, as two quick strikes completed what past players said was the result of years of “collective sin”.“It felt like there was a death in the family,” said Ashok Kumar, a member of the 1975 World Cup-winning side.

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Now, read The Nation (Pakistan) to capture a can-do spirit

Pakistan team is blend of young, senior and experienced players and eagerly looking to play against host China that has improved its performance to great a extent in the field hockey in recent years, said manager-cum-coach of Pakistan hockey team here on Monday.
“Our team is under going rebuilding process and the matches against host China would provide ample opportunity to the players to improve their performance and exposure in foreign county”, Khawaja Zakauddin said on arrival of the 22-member Pakistan hockey squad including four officials here.

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