Follow Us
Vijayanagar, August 16
Labelling himself as ‘yesterday’s man’, Olympic gold medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra on Wednesday said the country should focus on finding the next champion instead of talking about his feat.
Bindra scripted history after winning the 10m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to become the first Indian to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics. “In sports, yesterday never counts, I am yesterday’s man looking ahead for the next Olympic champion,” Bindra said at the launch of JSW’s Inspire Institute of Sports here.
“We should look ahead at finding the next gold medal, the facility created right here is the playground for the next emerging champion,” he added.
Talking about the importance of facing failure before achieving success, the 35-year-old Bindra said one should concentrate on the boring and mundane part of being an athlete.
“I had one good day. People should also talk about the miserable days I had. In an athlete’s life, there will be failures. It is important to acknowledge that failure and use it to propel yourself towards success,” he said.
“Failures are part of our lives. We should hence focus on the mundane and the daily grind,” he added.
In a bid to inspire the youth to aim for gold in the upcoming Asian Games and the 2020 Olympics, Bindra had last week released a video commemorating the 10th anniversary of his historic gold-winning performance.
Meanwhile, Balbir Singh Sr, who voluntarily took up the job of the chief coach and guided the Indian hockey team to its lone World Cup victory, said as a coach he felt it was his duty to praise all players, even as Olympic bronze medallist wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt felt that Indian coaches lived in the past and lacked the hunger to learn new techniques.
“I never discourage any player and even if the player had a disappointing performance I would tell him you’ll do better next time and it worked,” the hockey legend said during a panel discussion on the role of a coach.
Yogeshwar, though, pointed: “Indian wrestling started doing well globally after the foreign coaches came. In 2003, for the first time we got a Georgian coach, it was after that we won at the Olympics, started winning World Championships and medals in the Asian Games also increased.”
“The foreign coaches are willing to learn and work with athletes. But Indian coaches lack that hunger to learn. They still live in the past and continue to train with the old systems. Therefore it is essential to have foreign coaches in wrestling because one has to keep changing the game,” he said. — PTI
5