Rio Olympics 2016: Indian men's hockey team to skip opening ceremony

Rio de Janeiro: The Indian men’s hockey team will skip Friday’s opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in order to keep fresh for its Group B lung-opener match against Ireland scheduled for Saturday. [caption id=“attachment_2843432” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Indian men’s hockey team. Image Credit: Twitter @TheHockeyIndia[/caption] However, the women’s team will participate in the ceremony. “We have a match tomorrow, so we don’t want to drain the players since the ceremony will go on for long,” Hockey India President Narinder Batra told PTI. But sources in the team said that the team had decided to skip the ceremony due to lack of an official kit for the ceremony. “The kit that was handed to the players has not fit most of them. The players didn’t have the time to check the fittings since they reached Rio quite late and were given the kit on the day they started their trip,” a source said. The men’s hockey team, which last won an Olympic medal in the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games (gold), is aiming to end the medal drought, riding on a good build-up in the lead up to the Games.