India's luckless day at the Olympics

London: India had a luckless day at the Olympics with the men's hockey team continuing their pathetic show by going down to Belgium 0-3 to suffer their fifth consecutive defeat while triple jumper Renjith Maheshwary crashed out of the track and field competition here Tuesday.

Goals by veteran Jerome Dekeyser (15th), Gautier Boccard (47th) and Tom Boon (67th) set up Belgium's second win which lifted them to third position in the group with seven points while India - having lost all their matches - finished sixth without a point and will play for 9-12 positions, their worst-ever finish in the Olympics.

India's league campaign thus ended on a sad note as the team failed to show any improvement even against a team that was considered the weakest of the six in the group, but Belgium showed that under Aussie legend Colin Batch's coaching, they are a side making good progress.

Image: India's Sardar Singh, left, and Sandeep Singh wait for the play during their preliminary round hockey match against Belgium at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012, in London.

Text: IANS

Images: AP