The Sports Ministry has included six athletes, including Tokyo Olympic-bound wrestlers Sonam Malik and Anshu Malik, besides four sailors in its Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) core group.
Anshu (57kg) and Sonam (62kg) were included in the TOPS core group after they secured their Olympic berths by ensuring silver medals at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The 19-year old Anshu didn’t stop there as she went on to win the gold medal on Friday defeating Mongolia’s Battsetseg Altantsetseg 3-0 in the title clash.
Joining them in TOPS programme would be four Tokyo-bound sailors, who created historic first for the country by qualifying for the Olympics.
After Nethra Kumanan became the first Indian woman sailor to qualify for the Olympics in the laser radial event in the Mussanah Open Championship, Vishnu Saravanan and the pair of Ganapathy Chengappa and Varun Thakkar also made the cut for Tokyo in the Asian Qualifiers in Oman recently.
While Vishnu qualified in the laser standard class event, the team of Ganapathy and Varun made the cut in the men’s 49er class event.
