SINDHU, SHARATH KAMAL BEGIN TRAINING AHEAD OF TOKYO OLYMPICS

Ahead of the upcoming Olympics, the Indian badminton and table tennis contingent on Monday started their training in Tokyo. Shuttlers PV Sindhu and Sai Praneeth hit the court running and they trained alongside coach Park Tae Sang. Paddlers Sharath Kamal and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran also started their training and they were seen battling it out on the table tennis court. Men’s doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy also began their training ahead of the Olympics with their coach Mathias Boe.

Rio Olympics silver medallist PV Sindhu has been given a comparatively easier path in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, beginning July 23. Sindhu has been selected in Group J of women’s singles and she has been seeded sixth. The 2019 World Champion Sindhu will lock horns against Hong Kong’s Cheung Ngan Yi and Israel’s Ksenia Polikarpova on the league stage. Earlier, Indian archers Atanu Das, Tarundeep Rai, Praveen Jadhav, and Deepika Kumari kickstarted their training on Monday.

The Indian contingent that departed for Tokyo from New Delhi on July 17, after an official send-off at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, safely reached Japan and checked into the Olympics Games Village. All 88 athletes underwent Covid-19 testing at the airport and were found to be negative. Their PVC cards were also validated at the airport.

Archery would host five events in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics — men’s individual, women’s individual, men’s team, women’s team, and mixed team. The event will get underway from July 23 and it will run up to July 31 at Yumenoshima Park Archery Field.

Archery is one event where India is yet to win a medal at the Olympics. However, this time around, the country is confident of its archery contingent as all four qualified competitors go into the competition having done well in their previous competitions.