Meaningful training, medals raining!
The sports ministry is headed by an Olympic silver medallist, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who has no doubt guided and instructed the various federations on how to go about their training and preparation routines for the athletes.
India’s performance in the Asian Games is heartwarming indeed. It only shows that if the athletes are given proper training facilities and good coaching, they will lift their performances and bring the medals home.
There is also the matter of the sports ministry of the government of India being headed by an Olympic silver medallist, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who has no doubt guided and instructed the various federations on how to go about their training and preparation routines for the athletes.
Such experience as Rathore has is so crucial, for even the most wellmeaning official who hasn’t done the hard yards that Rathore has put in will ever be able to understand what an international athlete requires to win at these events.
The next Olympics are a couple of years away and the preparation for that should start now itself. The Asian Games medal haul certainly gives the hope that with training and preparation, India can get more medals than in the previous Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
P. V. Sindhu was brilliant once again as she got the silver medal, but even she would now be beginning to wonder if she is ever going to get the gold. She has now reached the finals of major events regularly, but not quite gone on to winning the gold medal. It is like a batsman who gets to 99 in every innings, but is unable to score that one run to reach the coveted century.
Mind you, getting to the finals is a tremendous achievement, especially in such a competitive sport like badminton where players hardly stay at the top for more than a couple of years. This is because of young talent coming through regularly. Sindhu