Will short overseas camps be the key to Paris success?
It is objective-specific training stints this time for many aiming to peak for the July-August Games
MUMBAI: Priyanka Goswami, India’s leading race walker, is currently camped in Shilaru, Himachal Pradesh but had visa issues not come in the way, she’d have hopped from Turkey to Poland to Portugal within a month and trained in those countries. She still has stints in Switzerland and France to look forward to in a training plan completely novel for the 20km national record holder.
Heading to Germany is far from new for Sharath Kamal. Yet the current visit, for 22 days, serves a different purpose. One that saw India’s top male paddler go straight into a high-intensity sparring session with a top-30 player on Sunday morning, a day after landing. “The first session itself we played best of five (games),” Sharath said.
Sharath and Priyanka are among multiple Paris-bound Indian athletes across sports who have opted for short, objectivespecific training camps abroad in preparation for the Olympics in July-August.
India’s qualified boxers — Nikhat Zareen, Lovlina Borgohain, Parveen Hooda and Preeti Pawar — spent 10 days in Turkey last month for a camp, sparring with boxers of varied styles. Wrestler Anshu Malik, the 57kg quota winner from last month’s Asian Olympic Qualifier, has credited a month-long training stint in Japan for her technical developments.
Quota-securing shooters Bhowneesh Mendiratta (trap) and Anantjeet Singh Naruka (skeet) flew to Italy for a three-to-fourweek training phase ahead of this month’s Baku World Cup. World No.38 paddler Sreeja Akula was in Taiwan for 12 days training under coach Liu Jun-Lin to add a fresh foreign perspective to her domestic coaching setup. Quite a few Indians have their training bases abroad and are tucked away there months together in the off-season (Neeraj Chopra and Avinash Sable, for instance), but these brief camps in the middle of the season are largely micro-focussed.
“The sparring partners were exceptionally good,” 57kg boxer Hooda said of their Turkey camp. “And they were different types of boxers with different styles. So, you learn how to deal with and play against such types of opponents during competitions.
“For example, two years ago I had lost to a Turkish boxer; I beat her this time while there. This camp helped me gauge my level, the improvements and what needs to be done further going ahead,” she added. Engaging with quality sparring partners, especially in boxing and wrestling, is the primary benefit of such overseas camps. At times, however, the driving factors can be basic.
One of the reasons Sharath, gearing up for his fifth Olympics, chose to move to Germany from Chennai was that the tables and balls there mirrored the ones at the Paris Games. “This morning, I played on the table which is going to be used in Paris. I thought that will give me a head start,” he said.
For Priyanka, it came down to the roads. Finding ideal flat roads for training in high-altitude places in India is a challenge. Hence, a month-long camp in Switzerland’s Saint Moritz had to be put in place. “High altitude roads are different in India, and difficult to walk on. In foreign countries, it is easier to find good, flat and clean roads for training,” Priyanka, who will be in Shilaru till June 10 before flying to St. Moritz, said.
Shilaru wasn’t part of the race walker’s initial and elaborate training plan devised by her Australian coach Brent Vallance. After being in Turkey where she competed and trained, Priyanka was supposed to head to Poland and Portugal for 11 and 15 days, respectively. Visa issues meant she had to come back to India instead. A 30-day high-altitude trip to the Swiss Alps next month followed by a fortnight of sea-level training in France leading into the Games though remains on track.
Giving her company in St. Moritz will be Tokyo Games silver medallist Lorena Arenas of Colombia and Australian 2023 Worlds silver medallist Jemima Montag, among others. “Training with a group where most women are better than me is the biggest benefit that I’ve felt of these camps abroad. I don’t get that in India,” Priyanka said.
Sharath too doesn’t get worldclass paddlers to spar with in India. And so, after four weeks of physical training in Chennai, the 41-year-old decided to head to Germany, where he has played club TT for years, with his coach Chris Pfeiffer. What he seeks from this training block is to ramp up his intensity on the table.
“And that kind of high intensity can be held only for a short period of 2-3 weeks; it can’t be for, let’s say, three months,” he said. “A lot of what I do will be about sharpening my strengths.”
At the end of this camp, Sharath hopes to come out match ready for tournaments ahead of Paris, as he felt at the Singapore Smash where he reached the quarter-finals in March. Practicing daily with “players of higher quality”, along with the flexibility that Europe offers of making a dash to play a few matches elsewhere, would help.
“When you practice against these guys, there’s no mercy if you make mistakes. In India, I can manage to win points even if I make mistakes,” he said. “So, I needed this kind of training now.”