Indian archers behind schedule in Olympic preparation: Limba Ram

Olympian and former national coach Limba Ram today said Indian archers are lagging in their preparations for next year's London Olympics and need a sports psychologist to improve concentration while competing in windy conditions and in front of noisy spectators.

Ram said while countries such as China and Korea have begun preparing for the event, Indian archers have still not started.

"We are technically sound, our shooters are shooting well but we lacked concentration when it mattered most," Ram, who was here along with his Rajasthan team to take part in the ongoing 34th National Games, said.

"We should shrug off the tendency to expect more medals from minimum practice if we are really serious about grabbing gold in London," he said.

"The archers should run two to three kilometres regularly as it would not only improve their concentration but also the physique.

"Besides, We should also start practising against the winds, where we lacked," Ram said claiming that the Indian archers now learnt to deal with the hooting from the crowd," he added.

Asked whether the appointment of a foreign coach would make any difference to the performance of the archers, Ram said there was no need for it.

"I would rate Tata Archery Academy coaches Dharmendra Tiwary and Purnima Mahto for men and women respectively along with Arjuna Awardee ex-Olympians Shyamlal, Dhulchand Damar are the best options instead of going for foreign coaches, who draw huge but without desirable results," he explained.

"What happened during the tenure of Australian coach Peter Fenny during 2009-10? Did archers performance improve under his tutelage?" asked Ram.

"We need more international exposure before the London Olympics as we have already delayed our take off as far as preparation is concerned," he added.

Asked to pick the five best archers for the London Olympics, Ram said there were many but Rahul Banerjee, Jayanta Talukdar, Mangal Singh Champia (all Jharkhand), Kapil Singh (Delhi) and Tarundeep Rai (Services) stood the best of chance.