India will send 19 athletes, accompanied by six officials, for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on July 23. London Olympics bronze medallist M. C. Mary Kom and Indian men’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh will be India’s flag bearers. The table tennis duo of Sutirtha Mukherjee and G. Sathiyan, sailing team and boxing squad will also be present, along with gymnast Pranati Nayak and swimmer Sajan Prakash.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics will finally get underway in Japan on Friday morning local time, ending a year’s wait for sports fans and the participating athletes after the Games were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s an Olympics like no other — and the Tokyo Games are surely that — but this is an event that has persevered through wars, boycotts and now a pandemic over its 125-year modern history. The Tokyo Olympics have already broken new ground because of the 12-month delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic, pushing it into an odd-numbered year for the first time. With local fans banned from attending the opening ceremony, the organisers have also restricted the number of officials from each nation to six. But with no fans permitted in Japan, foreign or local, it has the distinction of being the first Games without spectators. No foreign fans. No local attendance in Tokyo-area venues. Alcohol curtailed or banned. Cultural exchanges, the kind that power the on-the-ground energy of most Games, are completely absent.
