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The story till thenEver since the heady days of the 1980s and 90s, when PT Usha commanded the Asian Games with her performances and made fourth place at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Indias search for its next star athlete tended to focus on the track. The countrys most successful and recognisable female track stars had eased themselves gradually into retirement, and while their persevering successors did well at the Asian level, they went no higher. Little attention was paid to a heptathlete from Kerala who had decided to switch to the long jump and triple jump.A double gold winner at the National Games, Anju Bobby George held national records for both events. An ankle injury had kept her out of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and public attention, but from 2001, still under the radar, she was making the biggest strides in her career along with her husband and coach, Bobby George. A long jump gold medal at the 2002 Busan Asian Games and a rise up the international rankings offered signs of what was to come.The moment After a season in Europe with her husband-coach and a spell of training with world long jump champion Mike Powell, George made it to the 2003 World Championships final on a cold and drizzly August evening at Paris Stade de France in Saint-Denis. The qualifiers had cut the defending champion Fiona May of Italy and the 2002 Commonwealth champion Elva Goulbourne of Jamaica out of the fray. The finals field featured world champion heptathlete Eunice Barber of France, and Olympic medallist and European champion Tatyana Kotova of Russia. But Georges closest rival over the six-jump final was to be Jade Johnson of Britain, the silver medallist at the Manchester Commonwealth Games, where George had taken bronze.Georges 6.61m on her first jump was improved by Johnsons 6.63m and pushed her to fourth position. On jump No. 5, she thought she had been flat. I dont know how I landed, my legs were in a tangle, I thought, she said. On landing, she looked stricken, her head dropped and she hit the sand in frustration. When the numbers appeared, they showed 6.70m, four centimetres short of the national record and her seasons best. But ahead of Johnson, into third place and medal contention.When Johnson couldnt match that over her next three jumps, George had made her big leap into Indian sporting history, becoming the first Indian to win a medal at the World Championships.The reaction We always had a dream, the dream of taking Indian athletics away from the routine sob stories. Of winning a big medal for our country. We had to achieve that, no matter how hard it was. - Bobby George, Anjus coach and husbandExpert view She still had a lot more in her. She had great jumping ability and way better landing than I had. She needed more speed and I didnt have enough time to teach her that. She was sure of herself when she was on the field. - Mike Powell, world long jump record holderThe story since After Paris, Anju Bobby George remained Indias most successful medal winner on the world stage. At the Athens Olympics in 2004, she made the finals and broke the national long jump record with 6.83m, which still stands. In 2005, she won a long jump silver at the World Athletics Final in Monte Carlo. Nine years later that was upgraded to gold because of a drugs test failed by the gold medallist Tatyana Kotova.After Anjus retirement, Indias performances in track and field have grown with promising consistency, if not with world medals. At the 2012 London Olympics, discus thrower Vikas Gowda made the finals and race walker KT Irfan finished tenth and broke the national record in the 20km walk. Indias 4x400m womens relay team are once again amongst the top two teams in Asia along with the Chinese. Yet a world-class medallist and a breakout star is still to be found.Custom San Diego Padres Jerseys . 10 Texas A&Ms offence dominated as usual against SMU. San Diego Padres Gear . Fernandez, coached in Toronto by former two-time Olympic silver medallist Brian Orser, scored 267.11 points and is the first champion to successfully defend since Russias Evgeny Plushenko in 2005 and 2006. https://www.cheappadresjerseys.us/ . But now that hes in the NHL, the Calgary Flames centre showed big improvement in that department by scoring the winner in the eighth round of a 5-4 shootout victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Monday. Padres Jerseys 2019 . Siddikur, whose previous win on the circuit came in Brunei three years ago, finished his bogey-free round with a birdie on the 18th for a total of 17-under 199. Indias Shiv Chowrasia, who has finished runner-up in this tournament twice, was in second place after a 66. San Diego Padres Shirts .Y. -- Jayna Hefford scored the winning goal Friday as Canada survived a scare with a 4-3 win over Sweden at the Four Nations womens hockey tournament.Rio -- Indias seven-member badminton team begin their Rio campaign on Thursday, with both the doubles combinations and the three singles players across the mens and womens categories in action.Although this is Indias largest ever ever badminton contingent at an Olympics, with as many as seven players having qualified, medal hopes rest largely on Saina Nehwal.Saina, who is at her third Olympics, having reached the quarterfinals in Beijing in 2008 and won a bronze in London in 2012, has been in Rio since Monday, training at the Riocentro facility with her coach Vimal Kumar.There has not been so much hype as far as badminton is concerned so that has helped and she can focus, Vimal told ESPN. There is absolutely no pressure. The group stages should give her the momentum, the two matches there should not be much of an issue. Shes enjoying herself.Sainas lung opener is against 20-year old local player Vicente Lohaynny, ranked 73rd in the world. Players in the badminton competition have been drawn into groups of three and Saina will come up against another lesser known player, 61st ranked Maria Ulitina of Ukraine in her second match later.She is expected to ease past these these two, but the draw starts getting trickier with her pre-quarterfinals opponent likely to be Thailands Porntip Buranaprasertsuk, who is currently ranked 16. Saina has won 9 of the 10 matches between the pair, making her the overwhelming favorite to win that encounter too.Vimal is not looking beyond that match, scheduled for August 15, because if Saina gets past the Thai girl, her likely quarterfinal opponent will be Chinas Li Xuerui. The world number three won gold at the last Olympics in London and leads Saina 12-2 in their career head-to-head. Saina has lost her last eight matches to Xuerui, a streak that goes back to 2012.ddddddddddddIn practice sessions, we did do a lot of work about playing her, Kumar said. But our idea is to take one match at a time. At the moment we are not thinking about Li Xureui but definitely Saina has worked on certain strategies. We discussed about the tactics against quite a few of her potential rivals.We have been able to do some sort of match analysis in our training and stroke routines, based on those players. So everything is in place, now it all depends on that particular day. This is her third Olympic games, she has that experience and thats a big plus factor.Before arriving for the Games, Saina insisted that she will be approaching the Olympics just like any other major event on the circuit, describing it in one media interaction as the Rio Super series. It is a strategy Kumar is completely on board with, calling it is a smart way to ease the pressure.With Sainas ankle injury having healed fully, the build-up has been near perfect. Saina won her last tournament, the Australian Open, in June and has put in the hard yards in Bangalore over the last few weeks to prepare for another push to the Olympic podium.She has been able to train pain free, some small aches and pains are always there but when shes moving well and attack and play her normal game rather than get into a stage where you just have to retrieve, Kumar says.That only happens when you are moving well and if she is doing that, then I am very confident. Considering the way she has beaten some of these big girls in the recent past, her experience and her high confidence, I feel she is a strong medal contender. ' ' '