Picture Credit: Twitter/iambhavanidevi
Indian fencer Bhavani Devi, who lost to France's Manon Brunet in the second round of the women's individual sabre event at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday, after making a winning start to her Olympic campaign shared a picture with Tennis world number 1 Novak Djokovic on Wednesday. While the Indian, who was seeded 29th, lost to fourth seed Brunet, she became a national sensational by competing and winning in a sport at an nascent stage in India. In fact, she became the first Indian to qualify for the games.
From her post on Wednesday, it felt like she bumped into Djokovic while practicing at the Olympic stadium but was quick to ask for a picture to which the legendary Serb agreed. "Excited to meet Mr.Novak Djokovic during my practice at Olympics stadium. The World No. 1 Tennis Player & 20 Grand Slam title winner. @DjokerNole," she tweeted.
Check out her post here:
Earlier, Indian long jumper Murali Sreeshankar had got an opportunity to meet the 20-time Grand slam champion. The picture of the same was shared by the Instagram handle of Inspire Institute of Sports. "The Indian No. 1 meets the World No. 1! ? IIS Long jumper Murali Sreeshankar bumped into the Novak Djokovic at the Olympic village in Tokyo. ?
#CraftingVictories #TeamIndia #Tokyo2020 #Olympics," the picture was captioned.
In fact, men's badminton player India's Sai Praneeth also shared a picture with Djokovic, captioning it as the "Pic of the day."
Meanwhile Djokovic, who is a prime contender to bag the gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the men's singles category, has pulled out of the next month's ATP Toronto event. The decision comes in view of Djokovic's hectic schedule which also includes the Olympics and his chase of a calendar grand slam which will also take him past Roger Feder and Rafael Nadal's grand slam tally of 20 major titles. Currently, the three of them stand tied with 20 titles each.
If he manages to win gold medal at the Olympics as well as the US Open, then he will be able to emulate Steffi Graf's unrivalled achievement from 1988 when she had swept all four majors along with taking the gold in the women's singles in Seoul.