His was the best performance by an Indian boxer at the recent Asian Championships in Thailand but Vikas Krishan is hardly satisfied with his silver as he feels it would have surely been a gold if not for "overconfidence".
New Delhi: His was the best performance by an Indian boxer at the recent Asian Championships in Thailand but Vikas Krishan is hardly satisfied with his silver as he feels it would have surely been a gold if not for "overconfidence".
Vikas lost to 19-year-old Youth Olympic champion Bektemir Melikuziev of Uzbekistan in a brutal summit clash on Saturday. "I was not there for the silver, I wanted a gold. No doubt it was the toughest bout of my career but I should have won it. When I got to know that Melikuziev is just 19, I thought I would kill him and that made me overconfident,"
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Vikas told reporters in an interaction here yesterday. "I was overconfident about the result, I thought he is nothing. But I forgot that at 19 I was the Asian Games gold-medallist too, so I should have known that he could also be dangerous. Actually I don't even know how I managed to lose," he added.
Speaking about the lessons he learnt from the event in Bangkok, prompt came the reply, "I learnt never to be overconfident at any point." The Asian Championship was also the qualifying event for next month's World Championships -- the first qualifier for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Six Indians -- Vikas (75kg), bronze-winners L Devendro Singh (49kg), Shiva Thapa (56kg) and Satish Kumar (+91kg) and quarterfinalists Madan Lal (52kg) and Manoj Kumar (64kg) -- qualified for the Worlds.
"Because of my sponsors, Jindal Steel Works (JSW) Limited, I could go to US and UK before the Championship for training and that helped me be fully prepared for the Asian meet. Hopefully I would again be headed abroad before the World Championships, may be Kazakhstan," said Vikas. "In my weight category, the main competition in the Worlds is going to come from Cuba, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Besides I have to work on increasing my weight as well," said the 23-year-old. The Haryana-lad, who won a bronze at the 2011 World Championships -- only the second Indian to fetch a medal at the mega-event -- said he is confident of qualifying for the Olympics from the Doha extravaganza.
"I will qualify in the World Championship itself, this very year. It's not going to happen later," he said. Elaborating his ring strategy, Vikas said he would continue to go all out in the first two rounds and take evasive action in the final three minutes. "I would not change that. I would try to win the first two rounds, I don't like to think about the final round. I prefer to win it in the first two rounds," he said.
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