Tokyo 2020
71 men, 56 women — Know the 127 Indian athletes representing India at Tokyo Olympics
In a qualification period that was marred by the pandemic and spread over a period of two years, a total of 127 Indians have managed to book their ticket to Tokyo Olympics.
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With the month of June coming to an end, the qualification period for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has also ceased. In a qualification period that was marred by the pandemic and spread over a period of two years, a total of 127 Indians have managed to book their ticket to Tokyo.
Out of the total 127 athletes from the country who have qualified for the Olympics, 71 are men, while the remaining 56 are women.
The sport of Athletics will see the biggest contingent from India, with a total of 26 athletes who have made their way to the Olympics, credits to their exceptional performance. On the other hand, with a total of 15 qualified players, Shooting will be the country's second-biggest contingent.
India will have also have representation in Fencing for the first time in their Olympic history, while Nethra Kumanan in Sailing will become the country's first woman sailor at the Olympics.
Bhavani Devi is the first Indian fencer to qualify for Olympics. (Source: TOI)
Besides, the country also boasts of two swimmers – Sajan Prakash and Srihari Natraj, who have qualified for the Olympics by breaching the 'A' qualification mark for the first time ever, while Manna Patel is expected to make it through the Universality quota.
While there are some very well-known names going to Tokyo like Sania Mirza, Bajrang Punia, Saurabh Chaudhary, Neeraj Chopra and others, quite a few new names like MP Jabir, Bhavani Devi, Nethra Kumanan, Kamalpreet Kaur and others have managed to spring a surprise by forcing their way into the Indian Olympic contingent.
If these were some success stories, there are some heartbreaks as well; most notably in the racquet sport of badminton and tennis. While star players like Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth failed to qualify in Badminton, India will go into the Olympics for the first time since the 1992 Games without men's doubles pair in Tennis.
Further, the success stories for India five years back at the 2016 Olympics – Dipa Karmakar and Sakshi Malik, too, have failed to qualify for the Tokyo Games, and India will have zero representation in Marathon – a sport wherein India had fielded five athletes at Rio de Janeiro.
