Post-mortem on the Rio Olympics disaster

[suresh]

All of us have been watching and following OGQ with lots of interest. My hope is that their athletes make an impact in Tokyo. That will be the ultimate proof (I don't need one, by the way) to what Geet Sethi is talking about.

[suresh]

Very good guest editorial article by Geet Sethi.

Shouldn't this be put in the pre-mortem page for Tokyo?

[sameerph]

I think we had discussed in Rio Olympics thread that NRAI was the first sports body to appoint a committee to review disastrous performance of Indian shooters at Rio. This committee included Abhinav Bindra and Manisha Malhotra. Today as per the wish of the committee it's report was made public.

This is the report from Indian express -

Rio 2016 Olympic Shooters, coaches, federation, none spared in review report

It is really scathing report on coaches, federation and some of the shooters.

On the very promising Jitu Rai not living upto expectations, the committee said the pistol shooter did not get the right expertise and could not develop a “working relationship” with foreign coach Pavel Smirnov. Smirnov was also criticised for not being able to work out a plan for Prakash Nanjappa.
“The committee feels that the foreign coach Pavel Smirnov did not have the expertise in the precision events to help Jitu Rai win an Olympic medal. Rai’s admission of his inability to find a working relationship with Smirnov further put the shooter in a precarious position of coming up with his own training plans.
“The lack of expertise for the best shooter in India despite no dearth of support from the Army and the government further highlights the lack of proper planning. His extraordinary talent was taken for granted to deliver an Olympic medal. Any level of talent is irrelevant without correct preparation for the Olympics,” it said.

“Coach Stanislas Lapidus was very clear that his training schedule was not followed by Narang, which was informed many times to the NRAI. However, no action was taken. The issue of fitness was ignored and the NRAI was in the dark about Narang carrying a heel injury into the Olympics.

Nice to see such no holds barred report.

[prasen9]

I do not think Bindra should be evaluating himself. Calling Bindra to evaluate any of the other cases is fine. In Bindra's case, a separate committee should have reviewed the case, if a review was necessary. Evaluating and showering praise to Bindra on a report made by a committee where he is a member is weird.

[jaydeep]

Agree, that part is troubling .. Otherwise very frank and hard-hitting report.

[sameerph]

It was mentioned earlier that Abhinav was to stay out of any discussion on his own performance. Perhaps, the rest of committee may not have felt much wrong in his preparation ( his performance was really above his average in past 1 year ).

NRAI reported that it has accepted all the recommendations of the committee as per this report -

Under-fire NRAI Accepts Review Panel Report in Toto

In a day or two we will announce a committee which will ensure the implementation of the suggestions.
Raninder said that as suggested by the review panel, the NRAI will soon hire a High Performance Manager, who will monitor the programme of all the shooters.

That is good response by NRAI to the report.

[PKBasu]

I don't think we need to evaluate Bindra, who finished fourth despite not really being a contender globally in his event over the last year. As a gold medallist 8 years ago (and a retiree now) I'm glad his expertise is being tapped by NRAI.