The absence of top stars took some sheen away but India's record-breaking medal haul and a maiden top-of-the-table finish made the just-concluded 22nd Asian Athletics Championship here a memorable one.
A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Friday
Unheralded Bhawana Jat qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 20km race walk event after pulling off a shock win with a national record time at the National Championships in Ranchi on Saturday. The 23-year-old athlete, who hails from a poor farmer's family at Kabra village in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district, clocked 1 hour 29 minutes and 54 seconds, well inside the Olympic qualification time of 1:31:00, to win the gold.
The Tokyo Olympics produced many, many, many emotional moments for the athletes and their coaches...
'If you try to use every resource that you have, you won't feel like you've let yourself down. Don't think because wherever you came from that you cannot be successful. No matter if you make an Olympic team, you gave your heart and you put your heart out there to be as successful as you could be.'
It's time Devoleena takes a stand against Abhijeet, feels Pratik.
A vast majority of employees do just the bare minimum that ensures they escape censure or reprimand, such that they are seen to be doing their bit, without coming in the cross-hairs of the HR team for under-performance, observes Sandeep Goyal, managing director, Rediffusion.
The year-long suffering she faced following the controversial "gender test" in 2014 has hurt promising sprinter Dutee Chand so much so that she still feels that she may get trapped and her resurrected career may be in ruins again. Two years ago, Chand's dreams of representing her country at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games came crashing when an indefinite ban was imposed on her, barring her from taking part in women's competitions due to her higher levels of testosterone (hormones primarily produced by male). Dutee fought the case at the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Switzerland which upheld her appeal, citing no clear cut link with higher levels of these hormones with enhancement in performance. She returned to competitions last year and broke the national record in 100m dash recently. "I'm not able to trust anyone. I am scared that I might get trapped again. I hardly have any friends," Dutee told reporters on the sidelines of the GAIL Indian Speedstar event. "I prefer to train alone at SAI camp in Hyderabad. I don't train at national camp at NIS Patiala. Some of the 4x400 relay members don't like me," she added.
Batra said athletes and officials travelling abroad for training and competitions should be careful and restrict their movements. India's own COVID-19 daily case count surpassed the 3 lakh mark on Thursday with more than 2,000 deaths.
Team Australia's Emma McKeon is the first woman swimmer to win 7 medals at a single Olympics.
alaika Mihambo of Germany snatched the Olympic gold in women's long jump with her final leap of 7.00 metres in an enthralling final at the Tokyo Games on Tuesday.
'The captain's duty should be to ensure that the plan is enacted the way the coach wants the same to be enacted,' says Sudhir Bisht.
Masks are mandatory across all venues, both inside and outside, for all athletes, staff and media
The 32-year-old, who has also won world championship medals in the 200m and the long jump and is competing in her fourth Olympics, had comfortably won her 100m heat in Tokyo on Friday with a time of 11.05 seconds, qualifying for Saturday's semi-final.
India's top-five finish not a given this time
Images from the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday, Day 6.
Sreeshankar was all pumped up over his first three jumps, hitting soil at 7.95m twice after touching down at 8.00m with his first jump.
A summary of Indian athletes showing on Friday, Day 8 of the Commonwealth Games.
Christian Coleman showed again he is the man to beat in the 100 metres as he cruised to victory at the US Nationals and World Championship trials with another sub-10 second run on Friday. World silver medallist Coleman, who holds the year's fastest time of 9.81 seconds, won the final in 9.99 seconds after clocking 9.96 in the semi-finals.
Little-known retired swimmer Naoko Imoto will be a last-minute stand-in to receive the Olympic flame during a scaled back handover in Athens on Thursday, Tokyo 2020 organisers said. The Tokyo 2020 team had contacted Imoto, who lives in Greece, only hours before making the announcement on Wednesday evening in the Japanese capital.
Nothing is certain as Tokyo's postponed Olympics hit the 100-days-to-go mark on Wednesday
Belarusian athlete Tsimanouskaya, 24, had been due to compete in the women's 200 metre heats on Monday but said that on Sunday she was taken to the airport to board a Turkish Airlines flight.
Australian Olympians will be forced to break from their tradition of wild partying in the athletes village after finishing their events at the 2016 Rio Games, with a strict alcohol ban to be enforced by the delegation's minders.
Arif will be competing in Slalom and Giant Slalom events during the Games to be held from February 4 to 20.
Ariarne Titmus and Elijah Winnington led podium sweeps as Australia got the Commonwealth Games swimming competition off to an explosive start on Friday, scooping 11 medals in total including five golds
India added 26 gold, 18 silver and 6 bronze on Thursday.
Check out the complete schedule of Indian athletes at the Tokyo Olympics
A summary of the country's athletes' showing at the Tokyo Games on Friday, August 6.
The quartet of K M Beenamol, Manjeet Kaur, Rajwinder Kaur and Chitra K Soman clocked 3 minutes 26.89 seconds to qualify to the final in the event.
All the top action from Day 13 of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing on Thursday.
Former World double sprint champion Tyson Gay has been suspended for one year after testing positive in 2013 for a banned anabolic steroid, the US. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) said on Friday.
Norway nabbed the first gold medal of the Winter Games on Saturday
Two athletes, who are in contention for the Olympic Games, have failed dope tests conducted at the Indian Grand Prix in Patiala last month, the National Anti Doping Agency's director general Navin Agarwal said on Saturday.
P V Sindhu became the country's first-ever woman silver medal winner in the Olympic Games after coming second best against world champion Carolina Marin of Spain in a pulsating clash for the gold in the badminton singles on Day 14 of competition.
It was gold rush for India on the opening day of the South Asian Games with the country's wrestlers, swimmers and weightlifters showing their regional dominance by making a near clean sweep of top honours on Saturday. India clinched 14 gold and five silver medals on a highly productive day to top the medals tally with an overall count of 19.Sri Lanka, despite having a higher overall medal count of 21, occupied the second spot in the table owing to alesser tally of gold medals (4). Wrestlers were the stars for India, grabbing as many as five gold medals followed by the swimmers who clinched four gold and three silver medals. The weightlifters added three gold medals to the tally after the cyclists had opened India's account with two gold and an equal number of silver medals in the morning. Three women and two male grapplers finished on top of the podium as the proceedings went on expected lines on the opening day of the competitions.
Dutch speed skater Lara van Ruijven died after battling with an autoimmune disorder.
Chinese web-users unleashed their fury on the social media accounts of Australian Olympic gold medallist Mack Horton, demanding he apologise for calling swimming rival Sun Yang a "drug cheat".
Aruneel Sadadekar/Rediff.com picks his IPL Dream Team of Season 9. Check it out!
Embattled Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter has filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) after he was retroactively found guilty of doping at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
The United States set a world record of three minutes and 50.40 seconds in the women's 4x100m medley relay final at the world championships on Sunday.