What are our Tokyo Games medal winners doing now?
With a new sporting season days away, here’s a status report on the training and goals of India’s six Olympic medallists
NEW DELHI: Neeraj Chopra’s first priority in the early days of his training camp in California is to lose some weight. It’s been four months since that historic Olympic gold, a time in which the javelin thrower had little respite from felicitation functions and no training.
Chopra has just started on his pre-season training at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in California, where he landed after his plans to train at his usual base in South Africa got scuppered at the last minute with the discovery of the Omicron variant. In California, he shares an apartment with coach Klaus Bartonietz and physio Ishaan Marwha, the two-man army behind his Tokyo success.
With his old hands by him, a new cycle has begun for Chopra, one that will slowly gather steam before racing into a season that’s absolutely packed with big-ticket events--the world championships, the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games.
“It’s time to put the past to rest and focus on the future. Have arrived for my off-season training and look forward to restarting the process of getting better,” Chopra tweeted on December 8, tagging a photo of the picturesque US Olympic and paralympic training site.
As per the current plan, Chopra is on a 90-day training stint and is expected to be back in India by the first week of March, spend a couple of weeks here and return back to training, possibly in Europe to prepare for the season’s first Diamond League in Doha from May 13. All his energies will be focused towards the World Championships
in Oregon from July 15.
It will be one of the busiest calendars for Indian sportspersons with Commonwealth Games (July 28-August 8) and Asian Games (Sep 10-25), and it remains to be seen how they plan their competition schedule. For Chopra, breaching the 90m mark is one target that he has been chasing for some time and that would be one of his priorities in the new season.
PV Sindhu
While Chopra was forced into a long break post Olympics, PV Sindhu had no time to unwind after her bronze in Tokyo. She went back into training within a few weeks of her medal to prepare for the world championship in December where she was defending her crown. Though she did not manage it, Sindhu will not be too displeased with a season where she won an Olympic medal despite being out of form going into the tournament. Since Tokyo, she has played six tournaments, making it to the semi-finals of the French Open, Indonesia Masters, Indonesia Open and the title clash of the BWF World Tour Finals.
It will only be a couple of weeks of break for her before she starts a jam-packed first half of the year, starting with the India Open in New Delhi from January 11 followed by the Syed Modi International a week later. Then the All England Open from March 16-20, and the BWF World Championships in August, barely two weeks after the CWG. Sindhu might have to take a call there.
“She has to sit down with her coach and make a programme,” said national selector Vimal Kumar. “They will have to prioritize and focus on a few events. It could be All England, CWG, Asian Games etc and that will help in preparation,” he says.
Bajrang Punia
When it comes to roping in a foreign coach, bronze medallist Bajrang Punia is still on the hunt, and he needs to quickly find one. It was well known that Georgian coach Shako Bentinidis would not continue with him beyond Tokyo, considering that he never shared a good rapport with the Wrestling Federation of India. Punia had insisted on keeping the Georgian till the Olympics.
Punia was looking to hire Beijing Olympics bronze medallist Andriy Stadnik from Ukraine but that has not worked out.
Punia is currently in Moscow for pre-season training where he will continue his hunt.
“This is my first training camp after the Tokyo Olympics and I am hoping this turns out to be a very good one,” Punia said. “Russian wrestlers perform well in the Olympics and World Championships and I am looking to spar with experienced wrestlers. I will compete in the Ranking Series in Italy and Turkey and then the Asian Championships in Mongolia in April. I am going to give my best as my aim is to change the color of my medal in Paris 2024.”
Tokyo silver-medallist Ravi Dahiya has continued training at Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium, working with the coaches of the national squad.
Lovlina Borgohain
For Lovlina Borgohain too, there will be no Rafaelle Bergamasco at her corner. She was part of the two-week national camp at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) centre in Rohtak last week, with new women’s team coach Bhaskar Bhatt taking over the reins. Though Bhatt has been appointed only for a short tenure (one year) it remains to be seen whether the Boxing Federation of India hires a high-performance coach for women’s team.
Lovlina will be looking to fight in the world championships which was rescheduled from last year, though it is still not clear when it will be held.
Mirabai Chanu
Mirabai Chanu will also face the same conundrum with respect to prioritizing her events next year, but with coach Vijay Sharma by her side, she too is in good, familiar hands. Chanu was back to training within a month of winning a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics.