With 18 days left for the Olympic Games to start, most talks are around how the Indian men's hockey team will fare at the biggest show on earth. A couple of breathtaking performances in the last couple of month have captured the hearts and imaginations of millions in the country.
While the team is putting in a lot of hard work in the Bengaluru camp, tennis ace Sania Mirza revealed her expectation from this team. At a function in Mumbai to launch her autobiography "Ace Against Odds", Sania said, "I will definitely like to watch Indian hockey team in action. We didn’t make into Olympics last time at Beijing. I am a huge fan of hockey and will love to see them do well."
Sania who will be partnering 21-year-old Prarthana Thombare in Rio is excited at the prospect of partnering the young sensation from a small town in Maharashtra."Me and Prarthana from a good partnership. We won together a medal in the (Incheon) Asian Games. She is a young girl and has lot of prospect. She comes from Barshi, plays in the Sania Mirza Academy since the last year-and-a-half. It will be a good experience for her. Hopefully, we will see a lot from her. We hope she can become really good and have someone to take the mantle from me,” added Sania, according to Deccan Chronicle.
India will be sending its largest ever team of athletes to the Games this year, with more than 100 men and women set to make the journey from the subcontinent to Brazil. After finishing last in London, the sleeping tiger is now stirring and they have a good chance of breaking a medal drought which dates back to Moscow 1980. The women will be going to an Olympic hockey tournament for the first time since Moscow, where they finished fourth.
Everybody, including Sania Mirza, knows that the Olympics will be a slightly different for this contingent this year and the men's team can finish in the top three.
