For Tokyo, India's most important athletes may be without their coaches
With just four months left for the Tokyo Olympics, India’s top medal contenders are faced with a critical problem. Most of them—including Vinesh Phogat, Bajrang Punia, Neeraj Chopra, PV Sindhu and Avinash Sable—have spent years now training with personal coaches; with the International Olympic Committee recently banning overseas spectators and volunteers and the Tokyo administrators putting strict restrictions on the strength of participating contingents, some of these coaches may not make it to the Games.
For India’s best athletes, this could mean losing their essential support system when it’s needed the most.
Wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat, for example, have shown great results under their personal coaches. Punia has won both his world championship medals training under his Georgian coach Shako Bentinidis, who was hired by his sponsors but is now employed by the Wrestling Federation of India. Phogat’s comeback from a disastrous injury at the Rio Games in 2016 to becoming the No 1 wrestler in the world, via a Commonwealth and an Asian Games gold and a world championship medal was engineered by her Hungarian coach Woller Akos. Akos is employed by Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ), a non-profit sports organization that aids some of India’s top athletes.
Sindhu has her own physio and fitness trainer travelling with her since her return to competitive action in January this year. Dr Klaus Bartonietz, the German bio-mechanics expert and one of the world’s leading experts in the javelin, trains Neeraj Chopra, the most exceptional Track & Field athlete India has seen in decades. Avinash Sable, the five-time national record-breaking steeplechaser, trains with army coach Amrish Kumar. Long jumper M Sreeshankar, who recently made the cut for Tokyo earlier this month, is coached by his father. Paddlers G Sathiyan and Manika Batra—who has also qualified in mixed doubles—have their personal coaches, as do most of India’s best shooters, many of whom are also among the top shooters in the world right now.
“We’re telling our athletes, ‘you prepare as if you’re going there alone’,” Viren Rasquinha, CEO of OGQ, said. “If your coach or support staff comes, treat it as a bonus. But mentally prepare yourself to compete without anyone.”
As things stand now, the only way these coaches can accompany their athletes is if the Indian Olympic Asociation (IOA) drafts them in as an official part of the Indian contingent. It is learnt that the IOA and Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) are in the process of finalising a list, dividing the athletes and their support staff on a “priority” basis for the Tokyo Olympics, cutting down suppost staff from the less promising disciplines to accomodate more coaches for the medal hopefuls. To be sure, unlike Phogat's coach Akos, most of the personal coaches are employed by the respective federations; for example, if the wrestling federation has to choose just one coach to accompany the men's team, they have the option of picking Bentinidis over national coach Jagminder Singh.
“There will be a crunch,” admits IOA secretary general Rajeev Mehta. “But we will have to ensure that our medal prospects don’t suffer and their coaches and support staff travel with them. Some disciplines may lose out,” he said.
Disciplines like shooting, boxing, wrestling, badminton, hockey, weightlifting and a few track and field stars like Chopra and Sable will be on top of the priority list.
Usually, the approximate ratio of athletes to support staff is 3:1, meaning if a country has 100 athletes across events, it can send approximately 33 coaches and support staff inside the Games Village with the participants. In the pre-Covid world, coaches not part of the official contingent could still be at the beck and call of their respective athletes by booking accommodation outside the Village, either obtaining a day pass to the Village and training centres or purchasing competition tickets to be present at the venue. In Tokyo, this route has been shut down.
Even with the IOA considering including personal coaches in the official contingent, it will be a hard juggle to keep the contingent size within limits. For example, India have won 15 quota places for shooting—taking both the official coaches and the private coaches of the shooters who have earned the quotas into account brings the number of coaches to around 10. Not everyone will be on board.
“Every coach has been looking after a few individual shooters and they would want the coach to be around. We know it will be difficult to squeeze in everyone. The federation will have a tough job at hand,” said a national shooting coach.
Some disciplines will not suffer—the Indian boxing team trains as one under a national coach and a technical director. For Track & Field events like javelin, where in-game fine-tuning is not a priority, the presence of a personal coach is less important than for a sport like wrestling, where strategies are adapted and executed on the fly. Often disciplines that are not considered medal prospects suffer because their quota of support staff is redistributed to major disciplines. This time they could feel the pinch even more.
India’s top table-tennis player G Sathiyan, who is headed to Tokyo, recalled how the presence of his personal coach and former international S Raman during the 2018 Asian Games helped him win a medal. Raman was watching his matches from the stands as a spectator, even as Sathiyan lost both his group stage ties in the men's team event against Chinese Taipei in Jakarta.
“We met after my match and he was with me till late in the night,” Sathiyan said. “He made me forget that day and start afresh. He also told me about a couple of adaptations to my game specific to those conditions. I really needed that.”
The next day, Sathiyan won all his matches to assure the country a bronze medal, a first in table tennis at the Asiad.
“What Raman sir told me were small details, but that is what helped me win an Asian Games medal for India. Him being there made an immense difference—not just with providing a mental boost but also the technical and tactical part of my game,” Sathiyan said.
Sathiyan knows that for his Olympic debut, he will have to push hard for his coach to join him in any capacity.
“This being my first Games, I wanted him to be there. He knows me and my game better than anyone. Having him in a tournament brings the best out of me,” he said
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