Neeraj bags gold at French meet
NEW DELHI: India’s star javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra comfortably won gold at the Sotteville Athletics meet in France, beating a competitive field which included 2012 London Olympics gold medallist Keshorn Walcott.
Chopra’s throw of 85.17m put him way ahead of the field, including Moldova’s Andrian Mardare (81.48m) and Lithuania’s Edis Matusevicius (79.31m), who finished second and third respectively.
MEDHA, KAVIPRIYA, DIPTI MAKE PROGRESS
NEWDELHI: The women shuttlers shone bright but it turned out to be a mixed opening day for India in the individual events of the Badminton Asia Junior Championships at Jakarta.
Dipti Kutty, Medha Shashidharan and Kavipriya Selvam advanced after brushing aside their opening round opponents. Dipti prevailed over Kazakhstan’s Aisha Zhumabek 21-18, 21-13 and Medha accounted for Iya Gordeyeva, also from Kazakhstan 21-9, 21-10 and Kavipriya put it across Myanmar’s Seng Jar Nan 21-5, 21-8.
PRANEETH BOWS OUT OF SINGAPORE OPEN
SINGAPORE:DEFENDING champion B Sai Praneeth crashed out of the Singapore Open after suffering a narrow three-game defeat against Japan’s Yu Igarashi in the opening round of men’s singles competition. Sixth seed Praneeth, who has been out of form of late, went down 21-16, 16-21, 18-21 to Igarashi in a match that lasted an hour and 11 minutes. Sourabh Verma, Subhankar Dey, Ruthvika Shivani Gadde and former national champion Rituparna Das advanced to the second round.
MIXED FORTUNES AT WORLD JR SQUASH
CHENNAI: Indian players had mixed fortunes on the opening day of the Wsf-world Junior Squash with Rahul Baitha and Yash Fadte progressing to the third round in the junior men’s section while three others bowed out of the competition. Baitha beat Swiss player Nils Roesch 11-5, 12-10, 11-8 while Yash Fadte ousted Germany’s Abdel Rahman Ghait 10-12, 11-7, 11-7, 11-6.
SENIOR LEVEL COUNTS
Though parents of many young sportspersons stress on the need to perform at the junior level, the obsession is such that, at times, it is forgotten that results at the junior level hardly make a difference.
Many a times juniors performing brilliantly at the Under-15, U-17 or U-19 level fail to make the same kind of impact in seniors.
Likewise, there are several who are totally anonymous as juniors but come out big in seniors.
“Seniors is a wide open field. What is important is a lot of times kids at a young level get used to winning; that should not go to their head. At the end of the day what you do in seniors is most important. Not to take away from what you do in juniors but seniors eventually is what matter in your career,” said former shuttler Nikhil Kanetkar, who represented India at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
“So juniors should be like a stepping stone and not their final goal. A lot of kids fall back because they do well in juniors, even in the younger age groups, so they get used to winning and later are not able to handle their losing part -- they are not able to make the transition from junior
OVERCOMING ODDS
To strive is very important for junior shuttlers, which is when they learn to accept defeat, learn from it and move ahead. As the saying goes, failure is the greatest teacher. Hence, if young shuttlers lose at the junior level, they should not get demoralised because of it; rather learn from it and become better at their game.
“Ideally when you are 17 or 18 you should already be doing well in seniors. So if that is not happening then a lot of kids give up the sport and get frustrated because they are used to winning in juniors. That should not happen,” said the Pune-based Kanetkar.
“Struggle will be there because so many are playing and participating these days. Their parents will also have anxiety issues. But if you have the right training programme and hang on, keep working hard then the chances of doing well are much better because the support system is better than what it was during our time.”