Who said too much travelling can affect your performance? Here's how double trap shooter Sodhi prepared for yesterday's gold-medal effort
Who said too much travelling can affect your performance? Here's how double trap shooter Sodhi prepared for yesterday's gold-medal effort
Even as India's rifle and pistol shooters attributed their poor display at the Asian Games to peaking at last month's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, double trap shooter Ronjan Sodhi showed how to shoot to gold by simply getting the basics right.
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| Ronjan Sodhi discharges his spent cartridges during the men's double trap individual final at the Asian Games yesterday. PIC/AFP |
Sodhi (139 points) bagged India's third gold medal and then followed it with a team bronze medal in the double trap event alongside Asher Noria (134) and Vikran Bhatnagar (130) shooting a total score of 403.
However, he had a little revelation to make about his preparation. "I was here in Guangzhou a few days before the Delhi CWG. I came to get a feel of the place and simply test things around. Then, I went back to Italy to train (with shotgun coach Marcello Dradi). I returned to India in time for the CWG (where he shot a silver in the double trap event) and returned back to Italy to train again. Then, I traveled back home to India only for a day, after which I arrived here for the Asian Games. In this way I was completely focussed only on my training and on gold in Guangzhou," said Sodhi outside the Athletes Village yesterday.
The world champion shooter also ensured he had no distractions in Guangzhou. "I had heard that the media is being a little too harsh on the other shooters and didn't want to read any negative reports. Luckily for me, my television set at the hotel where I was put up (not in the athletes village, but closer to the shotgun range which is over 100km away from the village) had only Chinese channels and no Internet. So I was cut off from everything else and could concentrate only on the job ahead," added the 31-year-old ace marksman, who missed qualifying for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 due to the Indian quota system despite having equalled two world records en route his gold-winning performance at the World Cup in June.
u00a0"It's ironic that we have so many trials in our country and are expected to shoot well there to make the Indian team despite claiming gold medals in World Cups. Now. I have to forget peaking in international competitions and start peaking in national trials or else I could miss my spot for the next Olympics in London. Thankfully, those trials are in March, so I don't have to think about it straightaway. For now, I will go on a well-deserved break," he signed off.
