Tokyo Olympics 2021

The IOC on Friday relaxed some provisions of the controversial Rule 50.2 of Olympic Charter and approved guidelines for participants to express themselves during Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, allowing sportspersons to give their views including on the field of play prior to start of the competition, through interviews, protests or gestures.

Sania and American Bethanie Mattek-Sands started their latest campaign at Wimbledon by stunning the sixth-seeded pair, Alexa Guarachi of Chile and Desirae Krawczyk of the USA. They advanced to the second round with a 7-5, 6-3 win on Court 8. However, there was no such luck for Bopanna and Sharan, who missed the cut for the Tokyo Olympics as they could not improve their combined ranking of 113.

Seema, 37, bettered the Olympic qualification mark of 63.50m. Her Tuesday's performance was also better than the meet record of 62.49m, set by Neelam J. Singh in 2000 in Chennai. "I have worked hard over the last two and half years since the Asian Games and am happy that I could secure qualification on Tuesday," said Seema after qualifying for the Olympics.

Pranati got a quota place through reallocation since the Asian Championships, scheduled to be held in Tokyo in May, was cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic. Since the Asian Championships scheduled to be held in the last week of May in Tokyo was cancelled due to pandemic, the unused continental quotas were reallocated to the eligible athlete from the Asian zone only.