India’s rich haul at the Hangzhou Asian Games has bolstered the shooters’ belief they can excel at the Asian Championships starting in Changwon, South Korea, on October 22. There are 24 Olympic quotas up for grabs with India having already secured seven. Of India’s 36-member squad, only six were not in Hangzhou.
Indian shooters won a record 22 medals, including seven gold, at the Asian Games. Along with athletics (29 medals), the shooters contributed handsomely to India’s record 107 medals.
India’s French High Performance Director (HPD) Pierre Beauchamp didn’t put a number on the quotas he expects in Changwon while spelling out his long-term goals.
“We want to win 26 medals in the next Asian Games. This time, our target was to win 20, including 10 in individual events. With 22 medals, we have exceeded our goal, which is a great sign going into the Olympics year. Next Asiad, we want our count of gold medals to go up,” he said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the felicitation organised by the shooting federation (NRAI) for Asian Games medallists.
An advocate of data and technology, Beauchamp credited his five-step mechanism to assess the shooters and optimise their potential with the recent success. Shooters’ heart rate variability, skin temperature, respiratory rhythm and muscle tension are periodically recorded under a variety of simulated situations and the psycho-physiological data is then analysed by the high-performance team.
“We follow a five-step process of assessment, education, training, finals simulation and evaluation for each shooter. The data is thoroughly studied and trend analysis is done to gauge their performance,” he said. A “war room”, the site of the finals simulation, is where the shooters get a feel of the competition range at an upcoming event. Over the past week, the smart TV in the room has an image of the finals shooting range in Changwon and the giant screen has imaginary targets to aim at. The dry training lasts roughly 45 minutes.
“The idea is to get the shooters well-versed with the surroundings. We did the same with Hangzhou and we will do it for Paris too,” Beauchamp said.
The shooters, having assessed their Asian Games performances over the past week, are eager to fire. “The post-performance analysis was quite helpful. I shot well at the Asian Games but couldn’t win an individual medal. I figured my body had undergone a few changes due to which the jacket I wore in Hangzhou was too tight. It disrupted my rhythm. All these little things affect the overall performance,” said Rudrankksh Patil, who ended fourth in the 10m air rifle event after winning the team gold.
