The 18th edition of highly coveted continental tournament begins on August 18. Which are the new sports where India will participate at the Asian Games 2018?
India’s 572-member strong contingent is set to take on the Asian superpowers from August 19. The opening ceremony of the Asian Games 2018 is scheduled to take place on Saturday evening.
In the 18th edition of Asian Games, 10 sporting events are set to be introduced for the first time in the tournament’s history. Of these, India will participate in four.
Indonesia was given the liberty to select three events of their choice to introduce in the tournament. Let’s take a look at the events where India will make their debut in the Asian Games.
Pencak Silat
This event is one of the three chosen by the host nation. Pencak Silat is an indigenous martial art form from Indonesia. It is practised specifically in the Malay culture, where it was originated. Pencak Silat is spread across the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and Singapore.
This martial art form stresses on strengthening the abilities of self-defence, which subsequently helps evade threats and danger. It is a full-body fighting, and also allows the use of weaponry.
Indian athletes for Pencak Silat – Sonia, Simran, and Boynao Singh
Bridge
Contract Bridge is a card game which requires at least four players, with a pairing of two each. Both the teams compete to out-score each other with various tricks.
79-year old Rita Choksi is one of the members of the women’s team leading the charge in this event.
Indian athletes for Bridge (Men) – Pranab Bardhan, Sapan Desai, Subhash Gupta, Rajeev Khandelwal, Ajay Khare, Finton Lewis, Debabrata Majumder, Gopinath Manna, Sumit Mukherjee, Shibhnath Dey Sarkar, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, Jaggy Shivdasani, Arun Kumar Sinha, Rajeshwar Tewari and Raju Tolani.
Also read: Day 1 schedule of India at the Asian Games 2018
Indian athletes for Bridge (Women) – Rita Choksi, Feroza Chothia, Hema Deora, Bharati Dey, Marianne Karmarkar, Himani Khandelwal, Kiran Nadar, Aparna Sain and Vasanti Shah.
Sport Climbing
This is a test of an athlete’s strength, flexibility and endurance – all at the same time. This format of wall-climbing will include three categories – Speed, Speed Relay and Combined.
The first category, as it suggests, will be a competition between two athletes to determine the fastest to climb a 15-metre high wall. Speed relay will be competed between pairs, who team up to complete the speed climbing.
Combined category includes both climbing and bouldering.
Indian athletes for Sport Climbing (Men) – Chingkheinganba Maibam, Bharath Stephen Pereira Kamath
Indian athlete for Sport Climbing (Women) – Shreya Sanjay Nankarpec
Kurash
Kurash is a traditional martial art form, originated from Uzbekistan. It resembles a lot with wrestling. In this art from, both athletes attempt to pull/trip each other to the ground from a standing position.
Indian athletes for Kurash (Men) – Jatin, Jacky Gahlot (Under 66 kg), Kunal, Manish Tokas (Under 81 kg), Divesh, Danish Sharma (Under 90 kg), Parikshit Kumar, Aswin Padari Chandran (Above 90 kg)
Indian athletes for Kurash (Women) – Pincky Balhara, Malaprabha Yallapa Jadhav (Under 52 kg), Binisha Nayakattu Biju, Megha Tokas (Under 63 kg), Jyoti Tokas, Amisha Tokas (Under 78 kg)
