interviews

Anjali Bhagwat

We are talking to India's brightest shooting star Anjali Bhagwat, she is here practicing at a range in Mumbai, she has been through a road leading up to the Olympics and we just wanted to talk to her about it.

Anjali tell us how the preparations have been leading up to the Olympics?

Preparations are going well because this time fortunately I have a coach with me. SAI has appointed a Hungarian coach who was with me for the Sydney Olympics where I reached the finals, but at the Athens Olympics I did not have any coach I prepared on my own, but this time I am training under the guidance of the professional coach so it makes a difference psychologically also and it was a planned training. We had an opportunity to go to the older tournaments, the four World Cups, the Asian Championship where I won a few medals, so that has boosted my confidence. Now I am preparing at the Hannover shooting range which is well equipped and with good ammunition. I got a chance to practice there now I will be heading again to Hannover, from there we will be going to Malaysia for the acclimatisation and from there finally to Beijing.

Anjali since November when we last met you there have been a lot of tournaments, four big ones mainly, you won a Bronze medal in the Asian Championship, that must have been a bit of a relief for you, what were those tournaments like and what were those experiences like? Did you learn a lot? Did you get to meet a lot of your competitors?

Yes, it was a good chance for me to do a lot of experiments because I had changed my weapons, I had changed my out gear, which makes a lot of difference and we have to make a lot of adjustments as well, and all the ranges are very different, the Milan range is different, the Munich range is different, weather is different, so you get a good chance to experiment in terms of which ammunition to use, what not to do, what adjustments to make, it helps you build up your strategies because this is more of a strategy game, though technique and logic is same but at that moment what instant solution you need to use, try that instant solution has to be in your mind. You need to be ready with 4-5 options; if one does not work you try the other. So all these topics you can learn and build up your strategies. So I had a good chance in Munich as well as Milan, my scores were reasonably good not that good to win medals because I did not want to peak my performance at the wrong time. It is gradually going up and I am hoping that my peak performance comes during the Beijing Olympics.