NEW DELHI (AFP) — India travel to the Olympics without their trademark field hockey team, but determined to prove they will not compete at Beijing just to make up the numbers.
The hockey stars, India's flag-bearers at past Olympics despite winning the last of their eight gold medals way back in 1980, have fallen on such hard times that they failed to qualify for the first time.
But officials are confident Indian hockey's absence in Beijing will be made up by a promising display from other competitors like shooters, archers, boxers and tennis players.
"The Olympic world knows India for its hockey, but this is a good chance to prove there is more to our sport than that," said the country's senior Olympic official Randhir Singh.
India, a growing economy with ambitions to host the Olympics, has just four individual medals to show for its efforts at the four-yearly Games, the first one a bronze by wrestler Khasaba Jadhav at Helsinki in 1952.
The last three Games produced a medal each with tennis star Leander Paes winning a bronze at Atlanta, women's weightlifter Karnam Malleswari a bronze in Sydney and shooter Rajyavardhan Rathore a silver at Athens.
"No one gave them a chance, but they proved everyone wrong," said Singh, who also serves as the secretary-general of the Olympic Council of Asia.
"There is no reason to be pessimistic."
The shooters remain the country's best bet with army officer Rathore hoping to relive his Athens moment of glory in the double trap, despite inconsistent performances at the World Cup.
Officials also have great hopes on rifle shooters Gagan Narang and Abhinav Bindra, both among the top 10 in the world, pistol ace Samaresh Jung and trap shooter Manavjit Sandhu.
The seventh-ranked Narang, 25, returns to the Beijing shooting ranges where he won the air rifle gold medal at the World Cup in 2006 and followed that with a bronze at a similar event in April this year.
"It helps to have competed at the Olympic ranges," said Narang. "I have the picture of the range in my mind and it is part of my mental training for Beijing."
In tennis, Paes rubbished suggestions that his on-off partnership with Mahesh Bhupathi had hurt the three-time Grand Slam winners' chances of winning a doubles medal.
"Never write us off," warned Paes, 35, with whom Bhupathi won the Asian Games title in Doha in 2006 after losing the Olympic bronze medal play-off in Athens.
"We click well on court and that is half the battle won."
Paes and Bhupathi, who parted ways in 2000, differ on most matters and reunite only to represent India at the Davis Cup, Olympics or Asian Games.
It, however, needed Indian tennis officials to broker a peace deal at the French Open in Paris for the duo to agree to team up in Beijing after Bhupathi had flatly refused to play with with his erstwhile partner.
Tennis queen Sania Mirza, making a comeback after a wrist surgery, faces a tough field at Beijing, but India is counting on the archers and boxers to spring surprises.
Archer Mangal Singh, picked up from a remote village by steel baron Lakshmi Mittal's sports foundation in 2006, helped India win the men's recurve team event in the World Cup in Turkey in May.
Boxing officials have pinned their hopes on Commonwealth Games 54kg champion Akhil Kumar and Vijender Singh, who recently beat Olympic champion Bakhtiyar Artayev of Uzbekistan in the 75kg category.
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