Anup Sridhar, India's lone male badminton player in fray, breezed into the second round of the singles event with a straight game win against Marco Vasconcelos of Portugal in the Beijing Olympic on Sunday.
Czech shooter Katerina Emmons took the honour of winning the first gold medal of the Beijing Olympics as the first full day of competition began on Saturday after a dazzling opening ceremony.
Touted as India's best bets for a medal at the Olympics, Indian shooters started off on a disappointing note with Anjali Bhagwat and Avneet Kaur Sidhu failing to make the finals of the 10m air-rifle event in Beijing on Saturday.
Police banned demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy in Paris on Thursday but critics of China's human rights record stepped up protests elsewhere in the world to mark the start of the Beijing Olympics.
India's ruling Congress and the Communist Party of China signed a pact to put in place a mechanism that would help regular high-level exchanges between them, soon after party chief Sonia Gandhi arrived in Beijing.
The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on Saturday reiterated his support for the Beijing Olympics to be held later 2008.
The Belarussian athletes would strive to win more medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics than at the previous Athens games, an official with the Belarussian National Olympic Committee said.
