Was Tokyo 2020 the first time you heard of Equestrian?
For the first time, India sat down to watch the sabre women’s event fencing on television in August 2021 for the Olympics. Aditi Ashok gave India hope for winning an Olympic medal in golf for the first time. Weightlifting won the first medal in Olympics 2020 for India. These are some of the firsts for India in Olympics which we covered in our previous blog: what’s so special about India’s participation and its commendable performance at Tokyo Olympics 2020?
Tokyo 2020 was special for India winning the first gold Olympic medal in track and field giving a medal-worthy winning performance in sports like golf, fencing, table tennis, women’s hockey and most importantly in equestrian!
Equestrian
This may be your first time hearing about khel named equestrian but it has got a long history in India. Equestrian sport is commonly known as horse riding or horseback riding. Back in time, ashva (Sanskrit word for horse) played a significant role in Indo-European, there were many sports initiated around this animal. For example, the horse chariot race in ancient Greek and Indian rulers and the elite class in India involved themselves in equestrian either through participating in it or game betting. Now in time, Fouaad Mirza represents Indian equestrian sport along with other players. Mirza also got selected for Olympics 2020 and gave India its firsts in an Equestrian sport event by reaching the finals of the game. His equestrian campaign ended as 23rd out of 63 players on the leaderboard. He did miss out on a medal in the show jumping equestrian event in Olympics 2020 but received less recognition for his performance in Summer Olympics games.
India was unfamiliar with the equestrian sport until Fouaad Mirza outstands in Summer Olympics 2020 and became India’s first player to qualify finals of the show jumping equestrian event.
Javelin
Once, Indian television, social media platforms and advertisements were occupied with male cricketers and a few other prominent sportspersons until one-man army Neeraj Chopra ruled out them post winning India’s first gold medal in a track field event in Summer Olympics 2020. A Khel called ‘bhaala fek’ was quite popular in India’s history but slowly faded out until on 7th august 2021 a youth from Haryana became the first Asian to win an Olympic medal in javelin throw and the first athlete Indian to set the world record.
Fun fact: Javelin is not an underrated sport anymore.
The Sumer Olympics of 2020 in Tokyo was special for India since it gave 7 firsts and 7 medals overall. We mentioned about 6 sports but there are other sports too apart from these. For example, in an archery sport event, three out of four contingents of India qualified for the quarter-finals. Indian players raised the bar in table tennis at the Olympics games. Though, boxing star Mary Kom couldn’t complete her Olympic journey with a medal Indian boxing contingent Lovlina Borghain won a bronze medal. In the past years, Indian cinema glorified wrestling so did Indian wrestling in Tokyo 2020. P V Sindhu badminton star never lets down India.
The medal tally of India at the Olympics 2020 raised to 7 from their previous 2016 medal tally of 2. Now, in Paris 2024 medal tally needs to raise the bar to two digits and more apprising debutants and more firsts in various sporting events. For example, in the upcoming 2028 it is observed that cricket will be part of an Olympic campaign that might assure a medal for India in cricket!
That’s it for today’s new era for underrated sports talk and why leave behind the Paralympics games where India performed better than the summer Olympics games?
Gold toh Gold hove hai chahe wrestling laave ya boxing!write to us: groupsameeksha245@gamil.com
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