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Monday, May 20, 2013

Deepika Kumari wins 2 silver; ... rule changes in Wrestling


Even at this juncture with so much on match-fixing, IPL still hogs all the limelight while this news got drowned in the dins………..

Jharkhand was carved out of the southern part of Bihar on 15 November 2000.  The land of forests is currently under President’s rule.  When it celebrated its 10th anniversary of the formation, the State Govt issued full-page advts with 2 personalities – one was Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the other was this Arjuna Awardee……..

If you have recognized her immediately,  great… that is Deepika Kumari, archer.  She won gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth games in the women's individual recurve event. Kumari qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where she competed in the Women's Individual and Women's team events, finishing in eighth place in the latter.  She was conferred with Arjuna Award and this is the photo of her receiving the award from Mr Pranab Mukherjee.
 
The good news [actually not so good !] is she won 2 silvers in Archery World Cup, being slightly off the mark and missing the gold.  IANS reported that India had to be content with two silver medals as they finished on the losing side in both finals at the World Cup Archery – Stage I in Shanghai on Sunday.   Promising Deepika Kumari was done in by some sheer class of more experienced opponents as she settled for two silver medals, including one with Jayanta Talukdar, to help India finish fourth in the Archery World Cup Stage 1 that concluded in Shanghai.

Pitted against Ok-Hee Yun, a team Olympic champion and individual bronze medallist in Beijing 2008, Deepika took a 4-2 lead but the Korean showed amazing resilience to win successive games and seal the issue 6-4 for her third World Cup gold in Shanghai after 2006 and 2009. In the recurve mixed team final, the US duo of Brady Ellison and Khatuna Lorig outplayed Talukdar and Deepika 154-146 as India ended their campaign with two silver and one bronze (Women's compound team). A 10 in her final shot would have clinched a gold medal and a nine forced a shoot-off, but the Indian only managed an eight.  Earlier, India had opened their account  with a first-ever World Cup medal in the compound women section when Trisha Deb, Gagandeep Kaur and Lily Chanu P beat their Italian opponents in the bronze medal play-off.

Congratulations and wishes to Deepika for bringing more laurels to our country.  Understand that Archery World Cup is held in 4 stages  in Shanghai,Antalya, Medellin and Wroclaw and the finals would be held in Paris. 

There appears to be more winds of change as wrestling rules are overhauled, Indians will have to quickly adapt to new scoring system.  Daily Mail reports that the sweeping rule changes in wrestling may put Indians at a disadvantage and they would have to quickly adapt to the new system, feel coaches. In an attempt to address the concerns of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and save the sport from being dumped at the 2020 Olympics, International Wrestling Federation (FILA) came up with a slew of changes to make it more attractive for spectators. The new set of rules was approved at the FILA Extraordinary Congress in Moscow on Saturday where Nenad Lalovic of Serbia was also elected as the new president of FILA.

The point system has gone through major overhaul. Each bout will be of two periods of three minutes each and cumulative points will be taken into account to decide the winner. Also, a wrestler will concede points for passive wrestling. Earlier, there were three periods of two minutes each and the winner was decided on the basis of number of periods won. The changes would encourage attacking wrestling, and simplify the sport for the spectators. 'Indian wrestlers are slow starters. They need to ensure that they do not concede too many points at the start because then it will be difficult to recover as now the total points would be counted,' national coach Vinod Kumar told Mail Today. 'The three-period system suited our wrestlers. Here, if the wrestler opens a good lead at the start, it would be difficult for his opponent to comeback,' he said. 'In the last couple of years, our wrestlers have been attacking more and they should be able to adapt to changes,' Vinod added.
There will be only one bronze medal in each category. London Olympics silver medallist Sushil Kumar said that the dynamics of a bout would now change. 'We have to be on the attack right from the start. The whole system has been designed to make the sport faster and more attacking,' Sushil told Mail Today. 'Now the focus will be on how fast you can attack, on speed and agility. It will test the physical stamina as well. The wrestler cannot afford to wait to strike. A combination of factors will come into play,' he added.

The sport has been one of India's biggest success stories at the Olympics. Sushil's bronze at the Beijing Olympics spawned a new era for wrestling. It touched a new high at London where Sushil returned with a silver and Yogeshwar Dutt a bronze. The changes will be implemented with immediate effect. With the World Championships scheduled in September (16-22) in Budapest, the wrestlers will not get much time to get used to the new scoring system. Hope Indian wrestlers adopt to the changed rules and keep the Country’s flag flying high

With regards – S. Sampathkumar                                                                            20th May 2o13.

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