Waving flags and sporting big smiles, a bunch of little children landed at the Incheon Airport on Wednesday night. The 17th Asian Games open here on Friday and they have come to cheer their Chinese team.
Meanwhile, the Kazakhstan athletics team landed here a couple of weeks ago to get used to the conditions in the hope of winning some big medals.
In sharp contrast, the Indians appear to be among the least prepared as Incheon rolled out the red carpet for the biggest multi-event sporting spectacle after the Olympics. The boxing team, which got a confirmation that it could go only on Tuesday after it was allowed to fight under the Indian flag, missed a few crucial training sessions allotted for teams here over the last few days.
“The boxers have not come yet and I don’t know when they will be coming here. The wrestlers too have not landed,” said Adille Sumariwala, the Indian contingent’s Chef de Mission, at the Athletes Village here on Thursday evening, and that didn’t present a promising picture at all. The boxing team, one hears, left Patiala on Thursday morning and is expected to reach here on Friday.
Athletics won five of the India’s 14 golds at the last Asiad in Guangzhou four years ago but the full team has not reached here yet. And with trials being planned for two triple jumpers and the men’s mile relay team at Patiala, the last of the track and field stars are expected to leave for Incheon only on September 24.
With that being the situation, though Sumariwala predicted that India could finish with a similar tally like the last edition in Guangzhou — 65 medals that helped it finish sixth in the medal table — it looks a very tough task. It is more likely to be something around 50. Especially after the pullout of some of the big stars in tennis, including Somdev Devvarman who brought two golds from Guangzhou, and the absence of cue sports — which provided four medals including a gold in 2010 — in this edition of the Games.
But sport has a strange habit of throwing up surprises when you least expect them. And that offers hope.
While discus throwers Vikas Gowda, Seema Punia, triple jumper Arpinder Singh and the women’s mile relay team appear to be in the gold range, kabaddi looks set to bring in two yellows like it has done in the last few editions.
The ongoing World Championships in Spain had been mainly a story about heartbreaks for the shooters, who had been in fine form in the recent Commonwealth Games, with only Jitu Rai getting a silver in the men’s 50m free pistol. The Chinese and the Koreans have been dominating the Worlds and that could make things very tough for the Indians. But one just hopes that the Granada disappointment makes our shooters hungrier to put up a better show here.
Meanwhile the Chinese, who finished second behind the US in the medal table at the 2012 London Olympics, look stronger than ever. China is so strong and powerful that host South Korea and Japan will be content to fight for the second spot.
Some of the world’s best in badminton, table tennis, gymnastics, swimming and shooting will be in action here over the next 16 days here. But there will also be stories of athletes fighting against the odds, of heart breaks and near misses.
And that makes the Games such a beautiful and interesting affair.
