The scratch mixed team pair of Deepika Kumari and Pravin Jadhav will start the campaign with the first elimination round match in archery against the Chinese Taipei pair of Lin Chia-en and Tang Chih-Chun.
Deepika was to team up with her husband Atanu Das for this event. They had a successful outing in Paris earlier this month when they won the mixed team title in the World Cup Stage 3.
With Das struggling to put up a good score in the men's ranking round on Friday, Jadhav turned out to be the best Indian archer on Friday and thus got a chance to pair up with Deepika.
This gives Das a couple of days time to cool his nerves and come up with an improved performance in the men's team event and individual rounds. Getting a chance to pair up with a senior archer like Deepika, who is participating in her third Olympics, will be a boost for Jadhav's morale.
India's best medal hopes on Saturday will be in shooting and weightlifting.
If everything goes as per the script, India's first medal should come from the women's 10m air rifle event. Apurvi Chandela and Elavenil Valarivan will be going into the 10m air rifle qualification round high on confidence as they have had good performances in the last couple of years.
The experienced Apurvi and the young world No. 1 Elavenil will be up against an extremely tough field, as they look to make it to the top-eight finals field from among 49 shooters in the qualification round. Apurvi has had scores of 633 in competitions while Elavenil has shot 632.7 out of a possible 654 in the qualification round and if they replicate scores, they should be in the final.
Young shooters Saurabh Chaudhary and Abhishek Verma will present India's challenge in the men's 10m air pistol event. They have been the best pistol shooters in the world over the past three years, but the much narrower 36-man field here is fraught with danger, simply because of the presence of some legends of pistol shooting, led by Korean Jongoh Jin.
Mirabai Chanu, India's lone weightlifter here is ranked No 1 in the list of Tokyo qualifiers on the basis of her consistent performance recently. She will start as a medal contender in the women's 49 kg, having set a new world record in clean & jerk by lifting 119kg in the Asian Weightlifting Championship at Tashkent in April 2021.
Chinese weightlifter Jiang Huihua is the favourite in this category but Mirabai had topped her performance in April.
Table tennis players Achanta Sharath Kamal and Manika Batra will start their campaign in mixed doubles with a first-round encounter against Lin Yun Ju/Cheng I Ching of Taiwan. Manika and Sutirtha Mukherjee will also launch their challenge in women's singles.
Sumit Nagal will go against Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin in the men's singles first round while judoka Sushila Devi takes part in the women's 48kg elimination round.
Rowers Arjun Lal Jat and Arvind Singh will launch their boat in the men's lightweight double scull event in the heats on Saturday, hoping to make it to the finals. In case they fail to make it, they will at least hope to make it to Sunday's repechage races.
Mary Kom will represent the Asian bloc in the group, which also comprises the likes of Ukrainian legend Vasyl Lamachenko (Europe), a two-time Olympic and world gold-medallist who now plies his trade in the professional circuit, and five-time world champion and 2016 Olympic gold-winner Julio Cesar La Cruz (Americas) among others.
The 36-year-old Indian recently surpassed herself as the most successful boxer in the history of the world championships when she claimed her eighth medal, a bronze, at the marquee event's latest edition in Russia. She is also an Olympic bronze-medallist in the 51kg category besides being a five-time Asian champion and a Commonwealth and Asian Games gold-medallist.
"One female and one male ambassador per region will take on the role of engaging with the boxing community both in person and digitally," the IOC said in a statement.
"They will also help the Boxing Task Force (BTF) take into account the athletes' voice in all areas of its planning for the qualification events and the boxing tournament at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020," it added.
Boxing has been in administrative turmoil after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped the International Boxing Association (AIBA) of the rights to conduct the Olympic competition earlier this year, taking complete control of even the qualifying process.
The IOC asserted that AIBA failed to put its house in order as far as administrative integrity and management of finances was concerned.
"In all of the work of the Boxing Task Force we want to put boxers first. We are delighted with this group of diverse and inspirational athletes who make up the Athlete Ambassadors...," said Morinari Watanabe, IOC Member and Chair of the Boxing Task Force.
"...look forward to working closely with them in all areas of our decisions and event planning to make sure the athletes are not only at the centre of our work, but also actively engaged in it," he added.
The creation of an Athlete Ambassadors Group was announced in August this year, and they had to be first nominated by the respective National Olympic Committee (NOC), NOC Athletes' Commission and the National Federation (NF).
Other requirements included having competed at international competitions in the past four years, being born no later than December 31, 2001; being an amateur or professional boxer; and not having incurred any measure or sanction in relation to any violation of the Olympic Charter, the IOC Code of Ethics, and the World Anti-Doping Code.
The Athletes Ambassadors' Group:
Men: Lukmo Lawal (Africa), Julio Cesar La Cruz (Americas), Jianguan Asiahu (Asia), Vasyl Lamachenko (Europe), David Nyika (Oceania).
Women: Khadija Mardi (Africa), Mikaela Mayer (Americas), M C Mary Kom (Asia), Sarah Ourahmoune (Europe), Shelley Watts (Oceania).