The Indian women's doubles tennis combination of Sania Mirza and Ankita Raina departed for the Tokyo Olympics from Hyderabad on Monday, as confirmed by the Sports Authority of India (SIA). The pairing was announced earlier this month with India initially qualifying only for the women's doubles event. However, following many withdrawals, Sumit Nagal has also earned a spot in Tokyo, in the men's singles draw.
Sania will be participating in her fourth Olympics and is set to become the first female athlete to represent India in four editions of the big event. Her partner, Ankita Raina, will be making her debut in Tokyo with the games getting underway on 23 July.
Before the duo left for Tokyo, they had their final training session at the Sania Mirza Tennis academy on Sunday.
Sania Mirza who had a ranking of No.9 was allowed to pick her own partner for the Olympic games and she chose Ankita Raina who has a doubles rank of 95.
Sania and Ankita both competed at Wimbledon recently with different partners with Sania partnering Bethaine Mattek-Sands. The pair lost to Elena Vesnia and Veronika Kudermetova in the second round while Ankita partnered American Lauren Davis and the pair lost to Asia Muhammad and Jessica Pegula in the first round.
In the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon, Sania partnered up with Rohan Bopanna and was able to reach the round 16 before being eliminated.
Ankita was paired up with fellow countryman Ramathan Ramkumar for the mixed doubles event at Wimbledon and lost to Sania and Bopanna in the first round.
The tennis competitions for the Tokyo Olympics are set to start on the 24th of July
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)