Tokyo Olympics 2021

It is no mean feat for a boy like Satwiksairaj, coming from a humble background in a small town to rise up to Olympic standards. The 21-year-old shuttler from Amalapuram, a green and picturesque Godavari town, picked up the game while hanging around with his physical trainer father. As time passed by, the child blossomed into an excellent player and went on to bag a medal in the doubles category at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The game, developed in British India, became the preserve of the Europeans -- especially the Danish - and the Asians, where China today is a force to reckon with. The sport has been a regular part of the Summer Olympic curriculum since the 1992 Barcelona Games, with four events -- men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, and women's doubles - making their entry. Four years later, mixed doubles too was added.

To say that they became household names in the country would be an understatement. At the packed Siri Fort Sports Complex on the final day of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Saina was unstoppable. Amid the deafening roar of spectators in between points, the then world No. 3 conjured up magic, which left her Malaysian opponent in a daze as the Indian went on to win her maiden gold in the Commonwealth Games.

The sport, which started with military pistols and rifles, is today one of the most technical games on the Olympic curriculum with specialised, highly-sophisticated pistols, rifles and shotguns being used to assert superiority at ranges across the world.

There is no gainsaying that Bindra, winner of the first individual gold for India at the Olympics in 10m air rifle, set the marker for future generations to follow, and thousands of marksmen took up that challenge across the country, which is bearing fruit now. As India sends it biggest ever shooting contingent to the quadrennial games, there is hope of not just a couple, but a handful of medals from the sport.

India have claimed only two bronze medals -- Vijender Singh in 2008 and MC MaryKom in 2012 -- at the Olympics. But with so many boxers making it to the Games, there are expectations that the boxers will contribute more than one medal to the overall tally. The boxers will leave for Tokyo from Italy so as to avoid the added travel restrictions imposed on those travelling to Tokyo from India.

The Tokyo metropolitan government reported 920 new infected cases on Wednesday, reaching a new high since the peak of Japan's fourth wave in mid-May and exceeding the figure from a week earlier for the 18th straight day, reports Xinhua. Health experts, including Suga's top COVID-19 adviser Shigeru Omi, have warned that the Olympics accompanied with the summer holidays and the highly contagious Delta variant.

Born on July 5, 1995 at Hyderabad, the lean, lanky and power hitting shuttler is eager to add more medals to the silver medal she bagged in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016. Sports and winning medals are no stranger to Sindhu as both her parents were former volleyball players. In fact her father P.V. Ramana bagged a bronze medal at the 1986 Seoul Asian Games.

At Tokyo, Mary Kom, 38, will be participating in her second Olympics -- women's boxing was introduced at the London Olympics in 2012 -- after failing to qualify for the Rio Games in 2016. She is the most accomplished Indian sportsperson, having bagged the World Championship a record six times and has won a gold (2014) and silver (2020) medal at the Asian Games.

To achieve that, Prakash, an inspector with Kerala Police, will have to slash 0.5 seconds from his timing of 1:56:38 in 200m butterfly that he achieved at the Sette Colli Swim Meet in Rome, Italy. The postponement of the Olympics by a year came as a blessing for Prakash as he could complete his rehabilitation and training in Bangkok. Prakash will continue to train in Dubai for the next couple of weeks and will leave for Tokyo from there.