Archery | Don’t need foreign coach at this juncture, says Deepika Kumari

The Archery Association of India failed to provide a coach to archers Abhishek Verma, Jyothi Surekha and Deepika Kumari for the World Cup finals. Even then Kumari managed to win a bronze but she is wary of having a foreign coach now. 

"If we rope in a foreign coach now and he or she will teach us new things, it won't help. We have already worked on a certain technique and now suddenly you will change it, it will take 3-4 years more. We would want to polish our form and work on the mental aspect as well," Deepika told reporters on the sidelines of the first invitational Indian Open Indoor Archery tournament.

The former world no.1 also avoided commenting on not being provided with a coach for the World Cup finals and stated that coaches are currently scarce and more coaches should be provided nationally. It was not a very encouraging step by the Archery Association as after all the hardwork players were left to fend for themselves without a coach.

"I cannot comment on that (no coach given at the World Cup final). We need a national coach but right now in India we do not have too many of them. And the good coaches are busy preparing upcoming players," told Deepika.

The World Archery Championships are to be held next year in June and there will be Olympic quotas on offer which many players would like to bag.

"We have very little time to prepare for World Championship. If we feel the requirement to play a tournament in between, we will play the World Cup," the archer said.

The recurve team has not been performing on the expected lines, failing in the tournaments like 2016 Rio Olympics and 2014 Incheon Asian Games. Deepika acknowledged that

"But 2019 will be a very important year for us. We have not been doing well as a team for the last two years. I hope the trials are conducted well and the team is stronger than before so that we can return (from the 2019 World Championship) with a quota. That is very important," said Deepika.