New Delhi: Olympic bronze-medallist wrestler Sushil Kumar will be the flag bearer for the Indian contingent in the upcoming London Olympics, announced IOA acting president VK Malhotra in a send-off function arranged by ONGC for the Indian players, here at New Delhi.
Malhotra said, “We wanted our Olympic medallist to be the flag bearer and this time we had four players who are Olympic medallist. Boxer Vijender Singh and shooter Abhinav Bindra have their competition in the following days of the opening ceremony and Leander Paes has already had the honor of being the flag bearer at Sydney, so we decided that it was appropriate to name Sushil Kumar as the flag bearer.”
Union Sports Minister Ajay Maken, who was also present at the event said that this is the strongest Indian team in the history to leave for Olympics.
“All the 81 athletes who will represent India at the London Olympics have qualified and deserve to go there. Every athlete who will compete there has earned his/her place and it is the strongest group of people that we could have hoped for”, said Maken.
Maken added, “For a developing country like India, we need Olympic medals, the way our GDP is increasing our number of Olympic medals should also increase the same way and only then will we be able to compete with the world.”
Maken also had a word of advice for all the Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), he said, “I am glad to see that all the PSU’s in India provides job for our athletes to and that is a great help, but I would like to give them one advice and that is when the athlete retires the companies should make players involved with sports even after their retirement.”
Indian Sports News Network
