Hiroshima Asian Games - 1994

Hiroshima - 1994
Theme : India, First in Asia - Chess
Vishwanathan AnandVishwanathan Anand won the World Junior Chess Championship in 1987, the first Asian to win the world junior title. In 1995, he challenged Gary Kasparov in New York for the world title, the first Asian to be in a world championship game.

The pinnacle of Anand's career was achieved on December 24, 2000, when Anand became the 15th FIDE World Chess Champion in Teheran. Anand became the first Asian to win the world chess title, thus ending decades of Soviet domination in the ancient Indian game of kings.

Anand is the single biggest reason for the chess revolution in India. In the late 1980s, India had less than 90 players with an international rating. However, by 1998, 370 out of the 20,000 players ranked worldwide were from India, which had displaced China (with 75 players in the list) as Asia's leading chess-playing country.

1994 Hiroshima Asiad Hockey
Dates: October 2 - October 16, 1994
Athletes: 6,828 athletes and officials from 42 countries and in 34 events
Debut Sports: Baseball, Karate and Pentathlon
Top 3 Countries: China (137G, 92S, 60B), South Korea (63G, 53S, 63B), Japan (59G, 68S, 80B)
  • The Asian Games saw the addition of 5 Central Asian countries newly independent from the former Soviet Union - Kazakhistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan & Uzbekistan.

  • The Hiroshima Asian Games was the first Asiad to be held in a non-capital city. Also, this was the only Asian Games to have a male-female pair as a mascot.

  • Once again, South Korea would emerge as the top hockey country of Asia. For the first time in Asian Games hockey, Pakistan would not win either a gold or a silver medal, being relegated to a bronze.

  • India's results in hockey were: beat South Korea 3-1, beat China 3-0 and beat Bangladesh 1-0.

  • Pakistan's results were: beat Japan 4-0, beat Kazakhistan 3-1, beat Malaysia 4-1 and beat Oman 8-0.

  • In the semi-finals, India beat Japan 1-0, while South Korea beat Pakistan 6-3 (via the tie-breaker). In the final, South Korea beat India 3-2 to win the gold. By winning the title, South Korea had won more Asian Games hockey gold medals (2) than India (1).

Final Standings:

1 - South Korea, 2 - India, 3 - Pakistan, 4 - Japan, 5 - Malaysia, 6 - Kazakhistan, 7 - Bangladesh, 8 - China, 9 - Oman

Indian Team:

Indian Airlines  Ashish Ballal, A. B. Subhaiah, Mohammed Arif, Shakeel Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar
Railways Jude Felix (captain), Rajneesh Mishra
Punjab Harpreet Singh, Baljeet Singh
Mumbai Anil Aldrin, Dhanraj Pillai
Haryana Sanjeev Kumar, Devinder Kumar (Chandigarh)
Karnataka Sabu Varkey, Ravi Nayakar
Tamil Nadu Mohammed Riaz
Officials Zaffar Iqbal and Vinod Kumar (coaches), Chandrasekhar (manager)