No screen time or playing games on the phone, head cushions for the neck, quiet journey without expending much cognitive energy. These were some of the advisories for shooters at the Asian Games during their close to two-hour ride to the competition venue.
The Toyota region promotes itself as a tourist destination with beautiful hills with coniferous trees, lakes, gushing streams and camping sites. In winter, it turns itself into a skiing destination. The ride from Nagoya city to Aichi Prefectural Shooting Park is long, not just for the athletes but for all. It takes more than an hour and a half for some but shooters needed close to two hours — not a healthy ride for a shooter on the day of competition.
The coaches of the shooting team realised the perils of such a long journey that could lead to fatigue ahead of the competition. Not ideal at all. So the team came up with some novel solutions. "We thought the shooters need to be relaxed when they reach the venue," High Performance Manager Ronak Pandit revealed to a select group of media here on Sunday. He was there for the Asian Games 10m women's rifle event.
So what do they do?
"The shooters were advised to not spend time on their phone. And not play video games like Doomsday either because it would stress them before the game. We did not want them to get fatigued mentally and physically," said Ronak.
For the long ride, depending on athletes’ choice, the coaches advised their shooters to have light refreshments if required. Elavenil Valarivan confessed after her competition that the travel pillow really helped. ""For me it was very important that I keep my neck very stable because I have already neck pain and neck issues. I did not want to aggravate it before my competition. I was sticking to the neck pillow," she said. Stiffness of neck and foggy mind are the two heady mix that may derail a shooters competition.
The use of phones has other pitfalls as well. Glaring at the screen with a bowed head could lead to dizziness or nausea, which the coaches felt would affect their performance. Phones can only be used to listen to music. Another coach reflected on the conditions, especially in the 25m range. The hills may look beautiful but they attract low clouds that can affect the light. In minutes a sunny day can turn dusky. The coaches found a solution for that too. “The challenging condition is that light changes very frequently here,” said another coach – Manoj Kumar. “It's cloudy one minute and then it’s bright and then cloudy again. Sometimes it's windy. Altitude is different. It's not that we are trying to breathe but we have to adjust our sight and aiming. All shooters were briefed about it and had enough time to prepare mentally.”
Going by Sunday’s first event – the 10m women’s air rifle results, their strategy seemed to be working.
