Aparna Popat: Sportstar Aces is a brilliant platform to celebrate athletes and recognise their achievements

Aparna Popat: Sportstar Aces is a brilliant platform to celebrate athletes and recognise their achievements

Indian chess legend and five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand spoke about India’s chess ecosystem and stressed that the sport will feature much more in award shows and discussions in the coming days ahead of the seventh annual Sportstar Aces Awards. 

“The chess ecosystem has steadily progressed and expanded, but at the same time, you have to specify that we are living in a special moment to have this kind of bench with so many talented youngsters, principally in the men’s team, but also in the women’s team. And challenging for the world title, breaking records in the rating list, the ranking list. This is a special moment. And I think chess is a sport which will be in the sports awards a lot over the next decade at least,” Anand said.

A nine-time national title winner in badminton and two-time Olympian, Aparna Popat stressed that in a country like India, it is important to celebrate not just the performance but the individual as well, which acts as a source of motivation for athletes.. 

“We try to do justice. I think each sportsperson in India deserves recognition and praise. We’re here to celebrate not only performances but the athletes themselves. This platform [Aces Awards] is absolutely brilliant because Sportstar is one of those media houses exclusively meant for sport. It’s a great privilege to be on this jury with the eminent jury members,” said Aparna.

Arjuna Award-winning shooter Anjali Bhagwat, who is also a part of the Aces Award jury panel, spoke about the rise of shooting as a sport in India and how proper planning and intelligent decisions led to India’s good performance in the Paris Olympics. 

“It was [Tokyo Olympics] just a bad tournament. From there to now, see how shooting sort of dominated the medal tally in the [Paris] Olympics. We’ve seen Paralympians also have a lot of success. It feels good that our federation made very intelligent and good decisions after Tokyo. We had a very planned road to Paris, including good coaches, and they believed in local coaches. That’s the positive and important subject our federation handled because our local shooters were not comfortable with the foreign language,” said Bhagwat. 

Published on Feb 12, 2025