Saina Nehwal will have to put behind her the quarterfinal finish at the All England Championship and gather herself quickly to defend her title at the Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold, which begins with the qualifiers at Basel, Switzerland on Tuesday, according to a report in The Hindu.
World No. 4 Saina will open her campaign against Sayaka Sato of Japan in the women's singles competition. The 21-year-old Indian has a 2-1 record against the Japanese. At their last meeting at the World Super Series finals in 2011, Saina had won in straight games.
National champion P.V. Sindhu, who has been making news on the international circuit since last year, will take on Jie Yao of the Netherlands. In the men's singles, National champion Sourabh Verma will be up against Hong Kong's Wing Ki Wong, while R.M.V. Guru Sai Dutt will lock horns with the formidable fourth seed Jin Chen of China.
After almost a two-year struggle to prove his innocence, Indian middle weight pugilist Manjeet Singh has finally been cleared from doping charges by the Anti Doping Appeal Panel of NADA, says a report in The Tribune.
Notably, Manjeet had met with a motorcycle accident on May 29, 2010 and suffered injuries while he was in the coaching camp at NIS, Patiala. Dr Karanjeet Singh, who was available in the camp examined him and prescribed his treatment. The prescription form filled up by him had mentioned 'Soframycin'for dressing of Manjeet's injuries. The prescription card was given to the nursing staff of NIS and they were asked to do the dressing. Then the urine sample of the player was taken on June 8 and he was found positive for anabolic steroid (Metabolite of Clostibole). Later, his B samples was also found positive and he was suspended for 2 years by the Anti Doping Disciplinary Panel.
Meanwhile, National record holder Gurmeet Singh has won a silver medal, while Baljinder Singh has earned a ticket to the London Olympics in the Asian 20km race walking championships at Nomi City, Japan, saysa report in The Hindu.
Gurmeet, who had already qualified for the Olympics by clocking 1:22:07 in Dublin in June last, returned a timing of 1:21:31 to finish second on Sunday. He led the race until the last kilometre and missed the gold by nine seconds to China's Zhu Chundong, who clocked his personal best of 1:21:22. Korean Byun Young Jun ended up third with 1:21:42.
Twenty-five-year old Baljinder, who finished sixth overall, recorded a timing of 1:22:12, which was 18 seconds less than the ‘A' qualification standard for the Olympics.
The Chandigarh walker had won the trials at Patiala with a performance of 1:22:01 last month to get selected for the Nomi event.
Coming to hockey, chief hockey coach Michael Nobbs has got down to brass tacks, gearing up for the big bash at London. With the 18 players who helped the team win the qualifiers returning on March 15, Nobbs is ready with a fresh set of plans, writes TOI. “The first is to build on our fitness levels and then work on the patterns of play. We won the qualifiers final against France 8-1 and I felt we could have got more, say 15 goals had we concentrated and executed our plans. At the qualifiers we tried to create more penalty corners as some of the teams were defensive. We should have scored more field goals. We will address that in the run-up to London,” Nobbs said to TOI.
