Friday 24 August 2012

Olympians 2012

Indian medal winners:

Sushil Kumar: 66Kg Freestyle Wrestling; Silver. Sushil won a Bronze in the same category at the Beijing Olympics 2008. He is the first Indian to win two individual Olympic medals.

Yogeshwar Dutt: 60 Kg Freestyle Wrestling, Bronze.

Freestyle wrestling is a style of amateur wrestling that is practiced throughout the world. Along with Greco-Roman, it is one of the two styles of wrestling contested in the Olympic games. the ultimate goal is to throw and pin your opponent to the mat, which results in an immediate win.

Vijay Kumar: Individual 25-metre rapid fire pistol event; Silver.
series (or string) consists of five shots fired at one target each within a limited time. The targets stand next to each other at a 25 m distance from the shooter. As with all ISSF pistol disciplines, all firing must be done with one unsupported hand. When the targets appear or when the green light comes on, the competitor must raise his arm from a 45 degree angle starting position and fire his five shots. If a shot is too late, it will score as a miss.

Gagan Narang: 10 m Air-Rifle event, Bronze.
10 metre air rifle is an International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) shooting event, shot over a distance of 10 metres (10.94 yards) from a standing position with a 4.5 mm (0.177 in) calibre air rifle with a maximum weight of 5.5 kg (12.13 lb). The use of specialised clothing is allowed to improve the stability of the shooting position and prevent chronic back injury which can be caused by the asymmetric offset load on the spine when the rifle is held in position. It is one of the ISSF-governed shooting events included in the Olympic games.

Mary Kom: Boxing, 52 Kg weight category, Bronze. Mary Kom is the first Indian from the north-eastern states to win an Olympic medal. She has been World Champion in the 48 Kg weight category. She had to put on weight and go up a weight category for the Olympics, as her category (40 Kg) was not included. This is the first time that women's boxing has been introduced as a sport in the Olympics.

Saina Nehwal: Badminton, Bronze. Saina is the first Badminton player from the country to medal at the Olympics.

In this Olympics, medals were won in 4 sports: Wrestling (2), Shooting (2), Badminton (1), and Boxing (1).

Other stalwarts:

Usain Bolt: Jamaica; Sprint; won Gold in 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay. Set world record in the relay. He is the first person to hold both 100m and 200m world records. He has won consecutive Golds in 100m and 200m in the Beijing and London games. He is the first man ever to win 6 gold medals in sprint.

Michael Phelps: USA, Swimming; Won 4 golds and 2 silvers in London. Also became most decorated Olympian ever with 22 medals. 

Ye Shiwen: China, Swimming, 16 yr old girl who participated in the 400m individual medley and created a sensation for shaving a full five seconds off her personal best and breaking the world record by more than a second. In the last 50m, she swam even faster than the winner of the men's event, US star Ryan Lochte. Her win was followed by doping apprehensions which were denied and found to be untrue. This led to widespread condemnation of the Western press by the Chinese for jumping to conclusions.

Oscar Pistorius: South Africa, Sprint. Pistoriushas a double below-knee amputation and runs with the aid of carbon fibre artificial limbs- thus the nickname: "Blade Runner" and "the fastest man on no legs". At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Pistorius became the first double leg amputee to participate in the Olympics when he entered the men's 400 metres race and was part of South Africa's 4 × 400 metres relay team. Pistorius is the world record holder for T44 (one leg amputate below-knee category) in the 100200 and 400 metres events. At the 2008 Summer Paralympics, he took the gold medals in the 100, 200 and 400 metres sprints

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19060155
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_Bolt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_Wrestling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_metre_air_rifle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_metre_rapid_fire_pistol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius

9 comments:

  1. I think a question could be asked on what kind of prosthetic foot Pistorius uses or how it works

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm...pooch sakte hai! Though i feel its too technical a question. Max a 2-marker.

    Pistorius uses a 'Ossur Flex-foot Cheetah'. Flex-Foot Cheetahs have been used by Paralympic athletes since 1996 and have been scientifically proven to not give a net advantage over able-bodied athletes. They are not bionic or motorised. Running-Specific Prostheses (RSPs) are passive-elastic springs that are designed to emulate biological legs. They store and return elastic energy, but cannot generate net positive power or absorb negative power. Also extensive research has found that amputees cannot transmit as much force (which is critical for generating running speeds) on the ground with their RSP as they can with their biological legs. Thus they are in no way aided in enhanced speed due to the use of prosthetics.

    The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in 2008 that Oscar Pistorius can legally compete in IAAF athletics races wearing ÖssurFlex-Foot Cheetahs.

    Source: http://www.oscarpistorius.com/about/oessur-flex-foot-cheetah

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the info.Why I said this was possible is coz I believe they are looking at related aspects
    eg:flags in F1 q in 2011 mains-now we all knew that indian leg was gonna be held(infact it was on 30th,1 day after gs),so might have figured in the imp. topics list but conventional thinking would have led us to gather info regarding the sport on world champions,circuit details,constructors etc but upsc came out with flags-and not just 1,but 6.again,chequered was easy but the others?
    so,upsc is not asking obvious things.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another ex:in 2010,there was a question on WADA.that year,Indian cricketers and BCCI raised hue and cry about WADA's 'whereabouts' clause.so,i think they are devising ingenious ways of asking questions.

    ReplyDelete
  5. and also,I wanted to ask you if you were gonna do some brainstorming on kind of questions that are likely to appear in GS(topic wise).no doubt whatever you have put up on your blog is pertinent but maybe narrow it down to really important stuff?(me thinks that'll be v.helpful)
    waise toh pooch ne ke liye kuch bhi pooch sakte hain, but if we assume upsc has some sort of rationale/logic in asking q's,it makes sense in highlighting imp. areas of study.
    And as you mentioned,you have written twice earlier,you must have got a hang of some of the ways.Moreover,there was a post in which you mentioned that lots of questions related to stuff on your blog were asked.
    Not that we could not individually do this exercise ourselves,but just to make sure we are not missing out on anything.
    And as you rightly pointed,REVISE,REVISE&REVISE.Thats the key.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Fair point Anon- UPSC wants us to have a wholesome understand of issues, going beyond newspaper reports, so it would do us good to know all this.
    About brainstorming for questions: hadnt thought about that, but it is a good idea. Will start a post inviting inputs.
    Vaise, tumhara naam kya hai 'Anon'?

    - Spurthi

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi,i dont have a page on wordpress/blog spot,so i am simply anonymous for the profile.
    My name is anil.could have left a signature at the end like you but hadnt thot of it.anyways,thanks for the blog.its damn useful.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Anil, Am glad the blog is useful. :) You could suggest topics of interest too and I will try and write-up stuff on them. I am sure I must be missing tons of events that could get asked in the exam.
    - Spurthi.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes and perhaps it is better if it is done topic wise.I mean-1 list for culture,1 for economy,1 for bilateral relations etc.
    I am typing a few personalities here.Not sure how many will fit here,so I am keeping the list short.they are in no particular order.If u can create posts for different topics,that would be great.

    Fareed Zakharia
    Floyd Landis
    Thomas Lubanga
    John Miles
    Rafael Correa
    Rajat Gupta,Raj Ratnam
    Abid Hussain
    Abdel Baset Sayda
    Mehdi Hassan
    Michel Hazanavicius,Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo
    Kulendei Francis
    Lakhdar Brahimi
    G.D.Agarwal

    ReplyDelete