Mindset of Indian athletes has changed, says Bindra

Ace-shooter happy with medal haul at Incheon

 Ace-shooter Abhinav Bindra has said there has been a decisive shift in mentality among the Indian athletes when going to multi-disciplinary events. 

"Over the last few years, there has been a shift in the mental attitude of all our athletes," Bindra, who was in the city to conduct a shooting workshop on Monday and Tuesday, said.

"There has been a big change in the mindset and I'm able to see it whenever I'm competing in multi-disciplinary events.

"Athletes are no more just going there to be there. They are all hungry for success and they want to win the gold." 

One such Indian athlete who went there with the intention of winning gold but couldn't was woman boxer L Sarita Devi, who had to be satisfied with a bronze because of an officiating error.

Sarita refused to accept the bronze on stage as a way of demonstrating against the decision and Bindra said she was well within her right to do what she did. 

"It's the nature of the sport and life is not always fair," Bindra, 32, opined. "It was what she felt was right and one must respect what she did." 

Bindra, who won two bronze medals at Incheon, wasn’t forthcoming on his participation at the Rio Summer Olympics in 2016. "One just has to wait and watch," he said with a smile. 

The Indian contingent, which won 57 medals, couldn't match their performance of Guangzhou (2010 Asiad) where they won 65 medals but Bindra said he was happy. 

"Overall, I think we did well as a country," he observed. "It is hard to sustain the performances and the one big change for me was that different sports won medals." 

The 32-year-old, whose Foundation joined hands with GoSports Foundation to identify and train India's top junior shooters, also spoke a bit about his role in the workshop. "This is just me sharing my knowledge and giving back to the sport.

"I will continue to share my work and experiences with them and it is up to them to take the relevant bits. The whole plan is to point the young shooters towards a holistic way or approaching training," he elaborated.

"It's a process and we have just started and not really looking at results." 

The process of identifying the top young shooters (age group of 13-21) began five months ago and this is the first in a series of workshops, which will be held all across the country over the next year. 

Over 200 aspirants applied while 30 people were selected.


The selected shooters: Anjum Moudgil, Ekambir Singh, Malaika Goyal, Harmanvir Singh, Milindpreeth Singh, Karanpratap Randhawa, Samiksha Dhingra (all Punjab), Anmol Jain, B Mithlesh, Sandhya Winfred, P Ajaey Nithish (all Tamil Nadu), Prashant Tanwar, Aakanksha Jamwal, Monica Dalal (all Haryana), Nikhil B (Karnataka), Tejas Karle, Trisha Mukherjee, Sumedh Devlalivala, Prachi Gadkari (all Maharashtra), Shainki Nagar, Satyam Chauhan, Gajendra Bai (all Uttar Pradesh), Elizabeth Koshy (Kerala), Arun Sharma (Jammu & Kashmir), Diksha Rajput, Oshin Tawani (both Madhya Pradesh), Samarjit Singh (Uttarakhand),  Karnav Bishnoi (Rajasthan), Yashashwini Deswal (Chandigarh), Aditi Singh (Delhi).