Commonwealth Games 2022: Five challenges for Indian contingent

The athletes will be gunning for medals across 16 disciplines over the next 10 days.

Team India will compete across 16 disciplines and has sent a 215-member contingent for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. From their highest haul of 101 medals in the 2010 New Delhi Games, the last two outings in Glasgow and the Gold Coast have yielded a total of 64 and 66 respectively.

India will field athletes in 19 different sports, including the newly introduced Women’s T20 cricket. The burden of winning medals will be on wrestling, boxing, badminton, and weightlifting, as shooting will not feature in the Birmingham games. Here are five other challenges for the Indian contingent to contend with:

Adjusting to the conditions

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Getting adjusted to the weather and the conditions of the host country is a big challenge for athletes. When the body fails to adapt to the surrounding, even the greats like Johannes Vetter fail to do what they do best. For someone who was throwing well above the 90m mark consistently in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics, the German Javelin Throw athlete failed to breach the 85m mark in almost all of his throws in the humid conditions of the Asian country.

It has happened not just with Vetter though. The weather has played a big role in the below-par performances of the Indians at the recently concluded World Athletics Championships. Athletes like Neeraj Chopra and Murali Shreeshankar have already discussed the same after they had relatively under-performed in Eugene. And the conditions of the UK already have a notorious reputation. So getting assimilated to the conditions and remaining unfazed while performing at their highest level will be a huge challenge for India’s promising bunch.

COVID and injury management

COVID is still a massive concern worldwide and has already hit the Indian camp, with cricketers Pooja Vastrakar and S Meghana testing positive for the virus. The fear of the breakout of the virus in the Indian camp has forced the Indian Olympic Association to advise the athletes to not spend much time in public places.

Apart from the outbreak of the virus, injuries and injury management is another crucial area for India to work on. Neeraj Chopra misses out after the doctors advised him to give the Commonwealth Games a pass. The Tokyo Olympics gold medallist felt discomfort in his groin area while competing in the finals of the Javelin Throw event at World Athletics Championships. He joins shot-put national record holder Tajinderpal Singh Toor, badminton ace and former World No. 1 in Women's Singles Saina Nehwal and women's hockey ace Rani Rampal on the sidelines.  P.V Sindhu has underlined the importance of injury management multiple times as packed schedules greet Indian athletes across events.

Learning from previous mistakes

Showing progression from previous results in the build-up to Paris is key to gaining momentum and being in the right frame of mind for the big events. India will hope to work closely on not repeating both individual and team errors. Avinash Sable’s slow start in the finals of the 3000m steeplechase race at the World Athletics Championships meant he missed out on an opportunity of securing a podium finish. The gold medal winner of the race finished with a timing that was way below Sable's national record.

Another incident that comes to mind is the women’s hockey team wasting penalty corners. The Nabhvarnas were creating a lot of chances in the games of the Hockey World Cup, but they failed to get anything out of the circle penetrations and the penalty corners. The burden of medal-winning hope on badminton, boxing and wrestling stars should not result in off-colour performances.

Doping and bad press

Some major news has rocked the Indian camp just days before the games start. Five athletes from the contingent have failed doping tests and tested positive for banned substances. Two out of the six members of the women’s 4x100m relay squad failed the tests, giving it a depleted look. Any injury to the relay team would now force them to look elsewhere in the Indian camp for replacements instead of a natural runner.

Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist boxer Lovlina Borgohain had to involve the authorities to get her coach accredited and tweeted that she faced ‘mental harassment.’ Such incidents demoralize athletes and are a big challenge to brush under the rug without impacting their performances. 

Changing categories

Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu won her Tokyo Olympics silver in the 49kg category. But the Indian Weightlifting Federation (IWLF) rejected her push to compete in the 55kg category in the Commonwealth Games. She will compete in the 49 kg division at Birmingham. Ravi Dahiya also had to cut weight in quick time to be eligible for the 57kg cut-off. Dahiya had to train with highly reduced calories. World Flyweight champion Nikhat Zareen will have to adjust to a new weight category after the International Boxing Association (IBA)’s rejig.

Getting back to peak levels of performance in a new weight category takes some time. And such transitions need to be dealt with with a cautious approach. Drastic measures need not be taken and the health of the athletes has always to be prioritised.