IOA pleased with London display

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The Indian Olympic Association on Monday hailed the ‘path-breaking’ performance of its contingent in the 2012 London Games, saying it would give a tremendous boost to sports in the country.

“Our sportspersons did us proud. We won six medals which is the biggest-ever medal haul by India in the Olympics,” said IOA acting chief Vijay Kumar Malhotra in London.
The shooters and wrestlers earned India four medals — two silver and two bronze — while boxing and badminton provided a medal (bronze) each. “In the last four Olympics (1996 to 2008), we won total of six medals — one gold, a silver and four bronze — but this time our tally equals those four Games,” Malhotra said.
Lavishing praise on the wrestlers, he said, “Sushil Kumar rewrote history as he became the only individual Indian to win medals in two successive Olympic Games.
“A brave display by Yogeshwar Dutt which earned him a bronze was praiseworthy. The performance has been very satisfactory, we missed couple of gold medals by a whisker otherwise our tally and ranking would have been much higher.” he added.
Malhotra also highlighted a few other athletes’ performances at the Olympics.
“Apart from medal winners, other sportspersons also gave a heart-warming performances which argues well for the future of Indian sports.”
He pointed out that this was the first time three Indian athletes finished among the top 10 in their respective events — Krishna Poonia (7th in women’s discus), Vikas Gowda (8th in men’s discus) and K.T. Irfan (10th in 20 km walk) — in a tough field, “it was a great achievement”.
In badminton, world no. 4 Saina Nehwal lived up to her billing and won a bronze.
Malhotra said, “Besides Saina, P. Kashyap also did very well by becoming the first Indian male shuttler to reach the quarter-finals of an Olympics.”
The IOA chief, however, rued that India missed out couple of medals in boxing.
“The pugilists boxed very well but few of them could not get the decision in their favour. Mary Kom fought brilliantly for a well-deserved bronze. “Apart from Vijay Kumar (silver) and Gagan Narang (bronze), few other promising shooters also missed out narrowly.
Malhotra, however, admitted the archery team’s performance left much to be desired. “I think the young archers got overawed by the aura of the Olympics and also some of them fell ill immediately after arriving in London and that affected them.”
He agreed that the hockey team’s preformance was much below expectations.
“We need not castigate the players. This is part of the Games. However, we need to have a comprehensive future plan for hockey in the country.
“There were lot of expectations from the tennis squad but despite all the players gave their best, they could not make it to the podium.”
Malhotra said that even though India took part in 13 disciplines but in some of the sports like judo, swimming (one each), table tennis and weightlifting (two each) were just token representation.
“Sportspersons in these events got good exposure and I hope they will make full use of that in future,” he said.
Promising to provide all the facilities to the sportspersons, he said, “We showed the way by distributing all sponsored money to the qualified players and they also responded well by giving good performance.”