All eyes on Bhiwani boys, families recall hard-fought bouts

India waits fingers-crossed for three boxers to make it to the medals category of the Beijing Olympics — Akhil Kumar will try to box his way into the bantamweight semifinal on Monday evening and then all eyes will be on his young team-mates Vijender Kumar and Jitender Kumar. But in Bhiwani, which is already being called the Cuba of India, the man who coached all three is not surprised. On Sunday, 47-year-old Jagdish Singh boarded an early morning bus to Gurgaon to watch a batch of under-14 pupils perform at a school-level boxing competition.

Shouldn’t he have been in Beijing with his boys? Jagdish Singh simply shrugs. “The authorities took some half-a-dozen coaches, but nobody asked me. I talk to my boys daily and am seeing their performances on television. The authorities don’t think much of me anyways. Not long ago, they had lambasted my methods and told me to understand what the Olympics are, before preparing boys for it.”

However, it is the not the first time that vindication has come the way of this Sports Authority of India coach who has harnessed Bhiwani’s endemic talent for boxing to such an extent that four of the five members of the Indian boxing contingent at the Olympics are his pupils.

To read the full article, click here..
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com

Will carry it, not for china but with a prayer forTibet, blogs Aamir Khan

After Indian soccer star Baichung Bhutia, it is the turn of film actor Aamir Khan to express his solidarity with the Tibetan cause - but in a completely contrasting fashion.

While Bhutia declined an invitation to participate in the Olympic torch relay when it comes to India on April 17, saying it was his way of standing by the people of Tibet, Aamir Khan today spurned calls for a similar boycott and said he will run "...not in support of China... but with a prayer in my heart for the people of Tibet..."

Stressing that he had "the highest regard and respect for the struggle that the people of Tibet are going through," Aamir Khan said he would still run because the Olympic Games did not belong to China but to the entire human race".

In fact, if we were to try and find on this planet a place to hold the Olympic Games where the government of that place has not been responsible for human rights violations (in one way or the other), then I suspect that we would be left with very few options, if any at all," he wrote in his blog today.

To read the full article, click here
To read the ePaper, visit: http://epaper.indianexpress.com