The sporting highlight of 2024 has to be the Olympic Games in Paris, generally speaking. But India disappointed big time, failing to match the performance its athletes had put up in the previous edition in 2020 in Tokyo. And, for Delhi specifically, no athlete featured among the six Indian medallists – one silver and five bronze – in Paris. In Tokyo, India had won seven medals, including javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra’s historic gold. But in Paris, Chopra, who is from Haryana, finished with silver.
Apart from the poor Olympic Games show, some Delhi-based sportspersons and teams performed quite well in other competitions, though there was nothing extraordinary to write home about.
Chess, of course, brought the biggest source of joy for Delhi and India in December when Chennai-based Grandmaster (GM) Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest ever winner of the FIDE World Championship at 18 years.
Earlier, Delhi’s Tania Sachdev was part of the three-member Indian team that won the 45th Chess Olympiad gold in the women’s section in Budapest in September. Apart from 38-year-old Tania, the team comprised Harika Dronavalli, R Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, and Vantika Agrawal. They won the title with 19 points, one more than Kazakhstan’s tally. At the same event, the Indian men’s team won their first ever Chess Olympiad gold.
Woman Grandmaster (WGM) Tania, who attended Modern School (Vasant Vihar) and graduated from Sri Venkateswara College, has been quietly cornering glory over the years while everyone’s focus has been on other sports, mainly cricket. She became the Asian chess champion in 2007 and the Commonwealth champion thrice — in 2016, 2018, and 2019. But, unfortunately, her achievements over the years have not been aptly recognised, barring the Arjuna Award that she won in 2009.
Chess leads, quietly
Despite achievements of chess players not being acknowledged and appreciated in a cricket-crazy India, its exponents have been chugging along unmindfully. The biggest satisfaction for the connoisseurs of the sport is that any number of kids are coming up fast — not just now but for several years.
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Woman Candidate Master (WCM) Prishita Gupta, just 13, is one such promising Delhi girl. In November, she scored 9.5/11 points and remained unbeaten to become champion at the 40th National Sub-Junior Under-15 category in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, and collected Rs. 90,000 prize money along with the winner’s trophy.
Earlier, in January, 23-year-old Aradhya Garg became an International Master (IM). He defeated GM Tiger Hillarp Persson of Sweden in the seventh round of the Rilton Cup to touch 2400 in the live ratings. The talented youngster from New Delhi had earned his first IM-norm at the World Youth under-18 competition in November 2015. Then he secured his second IM-norm at 15th Delhi Open in 2017. He earned his final GM norm in at the 1st Guwahati GM Open in March 2022.
And in March, another Delhi player, 14-year-old Aarav Sinha, achieved the FIDE Master title. So, Delhi’s supply line of producing talented youngsters and prodigies is working well.
Athletics glory
Athletics has been a prolific medal-winning sport for Delhi, and Amoj Jacob, 26, remains one of its most familiar names. A 400m specialist, he won gold medals at the 4×400 metres men’s relay races at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games and at the 2017 Asian Championships in Bhubaneshwar.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Indian 4x400m relay team of Jacob, Muhammed Anas, Rajesh Ramesh, and Muhammed Ajmal clocked 3:00.58 seconds in the heats. But since their timing was 0.32 sec behind the cut-off time of 3:00.26 sec for qualification, achieved by Italy, they crashed out. The lone consolation the Indians can eke out was that it was their season’s best effort, though outside of the national record (2:59.05 seconds) that they had established last year.
Race-walker Vikash Singh was the only other Delhi athlete who represented India at the Paris Olympics. Participating in the 20km walk, the 28-year-old clocked one hour 22:36 seconds to finish a dismal 30th, though. However, earlier, at the 63rd National Inter State Senior Athletics Championship, held at Tau Devi Lal Stadium, Panchkula, in June, he won the 20km race walking bronze with a time of one hour 27:21 seconds. He can improve if he remains focussed.
Among the other promising Delhi athletes are Tushar Manna (400m), decathlete and high jumper Tejaswin Shankar, middle distance woman runner Chanda (800m and 1500m), and 400m specialist Jai Kumar, says Delhi head athletics coach Dinesh Rawat, who was part of the 4x400m relay team that clinched silver with a national record at the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games. “These four are good athletes at the senior level. There are some others at the junior levels,” Rawat tells Patriot.
Manna is 23 and can still improve while Jai is 19. Chanda, 23, is national women’s champion in both 800m and 1500m. “But her focus right now is on 800m,” points out Rawat, who has been Delhi’s head coach for 15 years.
Jai Kumar’s top performances in 2024 include gold in 400m with a personal best time of 46:86 seconds at the South Asian Junior Athletes Championship and another gold in the 400m at the 39th National Junior Championship with a meet record time of 46:29 seconds. Another fine show was the silver-winning effort in 400m (47:11 seconds) at the Indian Grand Prix-3.
Manna’s best outings this year were gold medal-winning 400m at the Open Nationals (45.97 seconds) and at the Under-23 Nationals (45.92 seconds — a meet record). He also won three silver medals at Khelo India University Games – in 200m, 400m, and 4x400m. He won another 400m silver at the All India Inter-Varsity meet.
In the women’s category, Chanda won gold medals at three important events — the National Open Athletics Championships, Inter State Athletics Championship, and the Senior Federation Cup. Besides, she finished fourth at BRICS Sports Games, an international competition, in Kazan, Russia, in June.
Discus thrower Anisha Dhaiya is another promising athlete in the girls’ under-20 category. This year, she won gold medals at Khelo India University Games in Guwahati and at the 4th South Asian Junior Athletics Championship.
Shooters’ woes
This is one sport in which Delhi is lagging behind other states, despite the city having one of the best facilities in India in Karni Singh Shooting Ranges. Former world pistol champion Jaspal Rana, now chairman of the Delhi State Rifle Association (DSRA), has an answer for this shortcoming.
“Delhi is a transit city for a lot of people. People like bureaucrats, politicians, and those in the various armed forces etc., come to Delhi, stay, and leave. They keep travelling from city to city [because of the nature of their job], and so are their families,” 48-year-old Rana, a four-time Asian Games gold medalist, told Patriot.
“So, you don’t have people staying in Delhi for a long time and training. Youngsters who live in Delhi are academics-oriented. Considering the time they spend in Delhi, they are doing pretty well in shooting,” he insisted.
Rana’s colleague and DSRA governing board member Farid Ali said: “Delhi desperately needs another facility like Karni Singh Shooting Ranges, because it is permanently busy with competitions or trials. Due to this, shooters find it difficult to train. We need basic infrastructure for 10m, 25m, 50m ranges and trap as well as skeet shooters.”
Nevertheless, there were some sparks during the year. Indians claimed the top four spots in 25m standard pistol event at the ISSF Junior World Championship Rifle/Pistol/Shotgun Championship in Peru in September-October. Devanshi, won gold, Parisha Gupta clinched silver, and Manvi Jain the bronze while Shikha Chaudhary finished fourth, missing the third spot narrowly. And in the 50m pistol women individual, Parisha clinched silver.
Delhi’s Kirti Gupta won bronze at the University World Championship held in Delhi and mixed team silver. Bhavya Tripathi, Manisha Keer, and Shreyasi Singh bagged silver at the Asian Shotgun Championships in Kuwait City in January.
The others
Delhi didn’t have a memorable year in football, either. One bright spark, however, was its under-20 team winning the Swami Vivekananda Men’s National Championship, beating Karnataka 4-3 on penalties, following a thrilling 3-3 draw after extra time, in Narainpur, Chhattisgarh, in May. In I- League, Delhi Football Club was placed in the middle of the 12-team competition points table.
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In golf, 21-year-old rookie Shaurya Bhattacharya of Delhi won the Professional Golf Tour of India’s (PGTI) Emerging Player of the Year title with season’s earnings of Rs 23,14,017, the highest among the rookies. Bhattacharya, who finished in tied 45th place at three-over 287 at the season-ending event in Jamshedpur, secured a creditable 28th position on the PGTI Order of Merit as a result of his win and four other top-20s in the season.
Among the seniors, Gurgaon-based Veer Ahlawat, 28, ended the year atop the rankings and earned Rs 1,56,35,724 during the year, thus beating the previous record for season’s PGTI earnings, of Rs 1,18,26,059 that Om Prakash Chouhan earned last year. “It’s been a great season for me and I’m very happy about my consistent showing. Winning the PGTI Order of Merit was a major goal and I’m delighted to have achieved that. I’m now eagerly looking forward to playing on the DP World Tour in 2025,” said Ahlawat.
