India at Tokyo 2020: A Roadmap

souravindia

The first one was a genuine problem. Think how nervous situation it would have been when your instrument stops working in middle of the qualification round. But I do agree overall the shooters have completely disappointed us and succumbed under pressure

Nagendra

In Men's hockey, we defeated Spain with 3-0. Rupinder Singh scored 2 goals.

Bad

The pistol lapse happened in the middle of the 2-3 series. After that, with the new pistol she shot a series of 95(good score) and then 98(excellent) meaning she has recovered.

Moreover, she had sufficient time to shoot her last series as well.So, don't fall for the propaganda.

The bottom line is that most of our athletes(in general,barring a few) are "Chokers".

Bad

The top 3 Indian Athletes who fight like warriors are Vinesh, Amit and Bajrang(in that order)

Even if they lose, you can't complain about their lack of effort.

Abhishek

I think our players needed access to sports psychologists for mental strength during and before the Olympic campaign....

Nagendra

Let's give her some break (Manu Bhaker). She is just 19 years old. Competing in Olympics & World cup ( yearly 4 time event), 16 times in 4 years & if we include finals, 20 times in 4 year period is al-together is different. Even Abhinav Bindra failed to qualify to final in his first Olympics (Sydney) & in London Olympics. Also failed to win a medal in his last Olympics (Rio) as well.

We had over expectations on her and there is lot of media hype as well. She failed to qualify to final twice even in 2019 World cup (New Delhi & Beijing). But she will come back stronger in next Olympics. Competition wise, close to Olympics is 2018 ISSF World Shooting Championships, and most of our budding athletes competed in Junior level and not in senior category.

Problem with most of the Indians is, we don't agree that we are not good enough and will try to find some excuse.

This chokers tag is always there for Indian sports. Even during Sachin era, we failed to Win Cricket World Cup in 1996 & 2003.  Sachin failed to make any impact in 2003 final, though he played well in 1996 WC SF, but lost his cricket in crucial time and couldn't able to help us in crucial game. Only under Dhoni, we had exceptional results in ODI format and to some extent in T20 format.
We are failing to win even in Kohli & Rohit era, in 2019 Cricket WC group stage, we have topped the table, but faltered in SF. History repeated in World Test Championship final & we have to agree that we are chokers even in Cricket.

P.S: I'm not fan of Dhoni. Hard-core fan of Sachin followed by Kohli & Rohit.

Nagendra

Heart break to Men's doubles. Despite winning their last group match against Britain, Satwik & Chirag failed to advance to Q.F, owing to inferior Game Difference when compared to Indonesian & Taipei .  Chinese Taipei won their last group match against top seed Indonesians.

masefieldtheoilfield

Some of you guys are being too harsh on a 19 year old. I agree with @Nagendra .
.

munna219777

Send the best person from the country to such competitions.

Are they best ? Manu Bhaker, Dipika Kumari ?

Do they participate in National Competitions and defeat all other Indian archers / shooters every time and get selected on merit ?

Or National championship is organised cunningly in their absence so that no Indian archer / shooter gets a chance to defeat them otherwise corporate ka investment will get wasted?

As their name is in TOPS  they will always be selected in easy route to qualification.

Plus every indian shooter or archer calls himself / herself world champion, former world champion, world number one, former world number one . Who gave them these certificates ?

Look at the list of participans in world cup archery (4 every year) where dipika won. Any korean was there? No

Look at the list of participants in world cup shooting (6 every year) where Manu won. Any chinese was there ? No

They give themselves world champion certificate and generate hype in depleted field and avoid competition of places in Domestic scene also.

So I am not surprised with what happened in 2016 Olympics (zero medal in archery and shooting)  and this one 2021 (zero so far).

Hyping Khelo / junior championship medal winners is another problem in India. when you win agaginst other participants who are say less then 21, pool is narrow,  in senior events you face 17 19 25 30 35 year old shooters or archers. Proven player is that who has competed against all the age groups at domestic level

In short

1) Introduce competition of places every time .

2) Strengthen domestic infrastructure

3) stop hyping juniors unless they perform at senior level

Darko

Hi, I'm a newbie here. Glad to discover this forum and some insightful discussion from posters like Bad & Munna.

In my opinion, this woeful performance of India is gonna stay until we invert the System. One or two exceptional medals won't bring consistency.

Our current process is to discover Talent and then groom them to raise their skill and performance to an Elite level. But since our Talent Discovery process is a "pull model" (like a real estate broker who expects the prospective clients to turn up at his shop), we don't have many Talent at our disposal. So, whatever limited Talent that our shambolic system can pull, we have no option but to go along with them irrespective of their psychological make-up.

My opinion is that Talent is overrated. It is the Physio-Psychological Make-up that defines an Elite Athlete. Take, for example, the case of a military training. Weapons training is NOT the primary focus of such a training. The primary focus is to break down and remold a recruit into an elite fighting machine. Once the physical and the psychological barriers of a personality are broken, they can be stretched to any desired level, they become elastic. This is the hardest and the most rewarding part of the training. Many candidates break down in the process. But the ones who make it through are transformed into elite killing machines.

Rather than taking the old and tired approach of first learning a skill and then gradually pushing it to a higher level, the approach should be to first remold the physio-psychological makeup to an elite makeup and then simply throw thousands of hours of elite training. The first approach takes time, and because we don't have a sporting culture like cricket where a candidate learns to compete from their childhood, so by the time an athlete reaches an elite level of performance, he/she is past their biological prime.

So, we should invert the process along the following lines:

1) Benchmark the physical make-up of an Elite Olympian for each sport.

2) Select ALL the candidates that meet the benchmarks. As young as possible.

3) Make them undergo a few years of Physio-Psychological Training where they are broken down and remolded into elite fighters. All the WEAK will be filtered out. Only the STRONGEST will make it through.

4) And then, throw in thousands of hours of Elite Training to master a skill. And now, since the operating level of a candidate has been elevated from the previous training, the extreme amount of effort, discipline and training required for mastery should be easily absorbed by the candidate.

This is how I think the Chinese do.

Thanks for letting me in. And have a good day!