Paris Olympics 2024: Rohan Bopanna, Sumit Nagal secure Quotas for India

Tennis stars Rohan Bopanna and Sumit Nagal have secured their Paris Olympics 2024 quotas for India through their Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Rankings in doubles and singles competitions respectively.

After securing his participation through rankings, Nagal held the final position among players eligible for quotas. The qualification window for the Paris Olympics ended on Monday for Tennis and the world number four Bopanna earned his quota comfortably, sitting pretty inside the top 10 of doubles competition since November last year.

In January of last year, Nagal, an Indian athlete who competed in the Olympics in Tokyo 2020, was ranked 138th. He won the Chennai Open earlier this year, which propelled him into the ATP Top 100. Bopanna, ranked fourth in the world, was predicted to easily meet India’s quota. She has been ranked in the top 10 in the doubles rankings since November of last year.

Nagal advanced eighteen spots in the singles standings the previous week, and he too reached the quotas. According to Olympics.com, after winning the ATP Challenger championship on Sunday at the Heilbronn Neckarcup in Germany, Nagal shot up to a career-high ranking of number 77, jumping from number 95.

There will be 64 participants in each of the men’s and women’s singles competitions at the Paris 2024. They were awarded to the top 56 men’s singles players according to the ATP Rankings, which were made public on June 10. There is a four-quota maximum that any nation can get.

As the host country, France had one quota space set aside in case none of their athletes were able to qualify for the Olympics directly through rankings. However, as France obtained all four men’s singles quotas through their rankings, the host country quota was added back into the pool and the cut-off went up from 56 to 57 players. National Olympic Committees (NOCs) for Olympic tennis will have to confirm that they will use the quota places by June 19. They have the exclusive authority for representation of their countries at the multi-sport event and the participation of the athletes in the games will depend on how they select the athletes to represent the country’s flag at the Olympics.

Athletes’ ability to compete in the Paris Games is contingent upon their NOC choosing to represent their delegation in Paris in 2024. NOCs hold the unique right to represent their nations in the Olympic Games. Meanwhile, a maximum of two teams from each country will compete in each doubles event at the Paris Olympics.

If they had a partner in the top 300 of the doubles rankings, the top 10 players in the rankings would be the first to qualify. If the NOC confirms the quota, Bopanna is anticipated to select world No. 67 Sriram Balaji as his partner for the Olympics in Paris. Bopanna, 44, advanced to the semifinals of the Australian Open after winning the Grand Slam event at the beginning of the year.

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