Olympics 2016: Archery coach Dharmendra Tiwari sets practice target scores to help team deal with pressure

Rio de Janeiro: Aware of their weakness to deal with pressure at crunch moments, the Indian archery head coach Dharmendra Tiwari is setting ’target scores’ for his team at the practice sessions in Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s about creating pressure situation for them. We are setting target scores of 55 (out of 60) for team events and 28 (from 30) in individual section so as to create a pressure situation,” Tiwari told PTI.

The Indian archery team, who were training in Marica, checked in at Centro adjacent to the archery venue of Sambodromo in the host city of Rio de Janeiro Saturday evening.

Indian archers were expected to do well at the last Olympics in 2012 but all the hype fizzled out as they made exits in round one. They don’t want a repeat this time around.

The Indian archery contingent, who have landed here about two weeks back, have already acclimatised to the conditions and are confident of putting up a good show.

Deepika Kumari and two-time Olympian Bombayla Devi Laishram were part of the London team while the third member Laxmirani Majhi will be making her Olympics debut along with Atanu Das, who will be the sole representative in the men’s section.

“The target is to do well in the qualification round, like finishing among top six so we have easy opponents in the initial rounds,” Tiwari said.

“At the same time we want to focus on our training and not thinking much ahead. The team was ranked 11th in the world championship (in Copenhagen where Indian women’s team finished with silver and grabbed a quota),” he pointed out.