CHENNAI: As many as seven names were dropped from shooting’s core group as the sports ministry released their first Target Olympic Podium (TOP) Scheme list after the 2020 Games. This was the first meeting of the reconstituted Mission Olympic Cell and was addressed by sports minister Anurag Thakur.
Shooting, which had as many as 16 in the core list, only has nine now as the likes of Apurvi Chandela and Tejaswini Sawant have been dropped from it. Shooting had been the biggest disappointment in Tokyo and the list is the reflection of that. Shot-gun exponent Mairaj Ahmed Khan too did not find a place.
Elsewhere, all the four sailors who took part at the Olympics find a place. In table tennis, two names — Harmeet Desai and Archana Kamath — have been added in the core group. Though wrestling fetched two medals at the Olympics, it pruned its core group list by two and Seema Bisla (50kg) and Sumit Malik (125kg), who tested positive for a banned substance, have been dropped.
This is just the first list and other disciplines — badminton, boxing, athletics and archery among others — will be added later. Interestingly, there could be controversial drops in both those categories. There is a possibility that some big names can be dropped from the list. Even in athletics this could be the trend. Age and lack of consistency could play a factor while deciding on boxing and archery. In all 148 athletes, 20 of them new, found a place in the new list.
New TOP Scheme list (only core group)
Sailing: Vishnu Saravanan, Varun Thakkar, KC Ganapathy and Nethra Kumanan; Shooting: Divyansh Singh Panwar, Aishwary Pratap Tomar, Saurabh Chaudhary, Abhishek Verma, Elavenil Valarivan, Anjum Moudgil, Manu Bhaker, Rahi Sarnobat, Vijayveer Sidhu; Swimming: Sajan Prakash and Srihari Nataraj; Table tennis: A Sharath Kamal, Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, Manika Batra, Sutirtha Mukherjee, Harmeet Desai and Archana Kamath; Weightlifting : Jeremy Lalrinnunga and Mirabai Chanu; Wrestling: Ravi Kumar, Bajrang Punia, Deepak Punia, Vinesh Phogat, Anshu Malik and Sonam Malik.