Having performed an necessary function in India clinching gold medals within the group competitors within the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Video games, star Indian paddler Harmeet Desai believes India has the power to upset any group on the Olympic Video games in Paris. On Thursday, he insisted that the group’s preparation was properly on monitor to carry out at their optimum greatest within the French capital. The Indian TT contingent made historical past earlier this 12 months when each the lads’s and ladies’s groups certified for the Olympics for the primary time and the preparatory camps, in Bengaluru from June 7-16 and in Saarbrucken, Germany earlier this month, have been targeted on figuring out the proper combos for the group occasions on the Paris Olympics, scheduled from July 26 to August 11.
“On a given day, I believe we actually have an excellent probability of beating any group. We now have gained in opposition to prime groups on the planet previously and it’s potential this time additionally if we give our greatest. Within the Olympics, if all three of us can placed on one of the best present then something is feasible,” the 31-year-old Desai mentioned throughout an interview with Final Desk Tennis.
Desai is a part of the Indian males’s group together with Achanta Sharath Kamal, Manav Thakkar and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran. He will even be competing within the particular person occasions.
Desai’s confidence stems from the truth that the Indian males’s group had defeated the mighty Japan within the quarterfinals to clinch the bronze medal on the 2018 Asian Video games.
Talking in regards to the rise of Indian desk tennis on the world stage, Desai credited the central authorities’s varied schemes and the launch of Final Desk Tennis in 2017 for the event of the game.
“UTT has helped us get extra expertise and publicity to play with worldwide gamers and get steering from overseas coaches. That was not the case earlier than 2017. So, this sort of expertise has helped the gamers get extra self-belief and carry out properly within the worldwide enviornment,” he mentioned.
The Indian males’s group will face China within the opening spherical whereas the ladies’s group will open their marketing campaign in opposition to Romania. The person occasions shall be performed from July 27 to August 4 whereas the group occasions are scheduled from August 5 to 10.
After the Paris Olympics, India’s representatives on the Video games and upcoming expertise from the nation will rub shoulders in opposition to one another and a few worldwide stars within the Final Desk Tennis 2024, scheduled to happen in Chennai from August 22 to September 7.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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