SSC
Who was the first Indian (and Asian) tennis player to win an Olympic medal?
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Answer: Option D — Leander Paes
Detailed Solution
Leander Paes won the bronze medal in men's singles tennis at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the USA. He defeated Fernando Meligeni of Brazil in the bronze medal match. It was the first Olympic tennis medal ever won by an Indian, and Paes is widely described as the first Asian to win an Olympic medal in tennis.
Significance of the medal:
It was India's only medal at the 1996 Olympics.
It was India's first individual Olympic medal since K. D. Jadhav's wrestling bronze in 1952, a gap of 44 years.
Tennis had been reintroduced as a full Olympic sport only in 1988 (Seoul), after being dropped after 1924.
More about Leander Paes:
He was born on 17 June 1973 in Calcutta (Kolkata). His father, Vece Paes, won a bronze medal in hockey at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and his mother, Jennifer Paes, captained the Indian women's basketball team.
He won 18 Grand Slam titles: 8 in men's doubles and 10 in mixed doubles. With Martina Navratilova, he won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon and the Australian Open in 2003.
With Mahesh Bhupathi, he formed the "Indian Express" doubles team, which won the French Open and Wimbledon in 1999.
He is the only tennis player to have played in seven consecutive Olympics (1992-2016).
He holds the record for the most doubles wins in Davis Cup history.
He received the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna (1996-97), the Padma Shri (2001) and the Padma Bhushan (2014). In 2024, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the first Asian man to receive this honour.
Why not the other options?
- ✗Mahesh Bhupathi was India's first Grand Slam champion (1997) but never won an Olympic medal.
- ✗Vijay Amritraj was a top Indian player of the 1970s-80s but did not win an Olympic medal.
- ✗Sania Mirza reached the mixed doubles semi-finals at the 2016 Rio Olympics with Rohan Bopanna but lost the bronze medal match.
Quick tip
Remember: Leander Paes = Olympic bronze in tennis (1996 Atlanta), first Indian/Asian tennis medal; played in 7 Olympics; father Vece Paes won hockey bronze in 1972.
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Sports — Preparation
This question tests your understanding of Sports, a key topic in the General Knowledge section. The detailed solution above uses a step-by-step approach to show the reasoning, and where available, a shortcut that helps you solve similar questions in under 90 seconds during the actual exam.
This topic covers sports GK: major tournaments and their venues, trophies and cups associated with each sport, sports terms, the number of players in a team, sports awards in India, Olympic and Asian Games facts, and famous sportspersons and their achievements. Common questions ask which sport a trophy belongs to (such as the Durand Cup for football or the Ranji Trophy for cricket), which term is used in which sport, and where a tournament was held. Records and results change after every season, so pair static facts such as team sizes and terms with recent results from current affairs. Practise the sports questions below, written in the style of the general awareness sections of exams such as SSC, banking, railways, CUET GAT, MAH CET and CLAT. Each question comes with a detailed explanation that adds related facts, so every question helps you revise more than one point.