Mathias Boe, a distinguished Danish doubles Badminton player who retired in 2020 from his national team, has now been roped as India’s double’s coach and has been formulated the task to shape up India’s premier doubles pair Chirag and Satwiksairaj to shape ahead of Tokyo Olympics. According to Mathias Boe, India’s top-ranked doubles badminton pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy can make a mark at their first-ever Olympics in Tokyo later this year.
Chirag and Satwiksairaj have been rigorously practising with Boe and has been tuning their game at the best possible level, in order to combat the variety of opponents they are likely to encounter in Tokyo.
In a statement to The New Indian Express, the 40-year-old Danish coach said, “We wanted to see where we stand, and not be scared of new things. And what we were trying to implement is working well. It’s straightforward what our strengths are, and with these strategies, Indians can be extremely dangerous even against the top pairs,”
Known for his pursuit of perfection and gruelling training regimen, Mathias Boe is now focused on translating that attitude into his training. “I’m used to being in a training hall as a player. I put myself in their shoes and coach them as I would’ve coached myself if I was two different persons,” he says. “I’m a tough coach but I put it all out there. And if they are not pushing hard enough, or putting in the extra effort, then they need someone close to them to tell them the harsh words. I’m not someone who’ll keep patting them on the back. I’ll tell them ‘this is not good and you need to do this to get better. Initially, they thought it’s a little bit strict, but now they understand,” he added.
Being the winner of an Olympic silver medal at London 2012 and also as a runner-up at the 2013 World Championships, Boe has one mission in his mind to push the Indian pair as hard as they can go. However, it has not been a case of a strict disciplinarian enforcing his methods on the duo. he wants his players to understand the methods and be convinced before implementing them.
As the outburst of the pandemic has affected the training plans drawn by many badminton players, Chirag and Satwiksairaj have also faced the heat into their training regime. Well, in such a scenario Boe is looking at factors that are in their control instead. With the cancellation of many Super Series events in Malaysia and Singapore due to the pandemic, Indian shuttlers are not likely to get quality match experience before they head towards Tokyo, but Boe is looking at what’s ahead for the doubles duo Chirag and Satwiksairaj.
“We tend to be disciplined as players. But this virus has been difficult for everyone. Not so much about sporting things, but the scene is so bad that it’s overshadowed everything. My job was to draw up training timelines. Work on Plan B if Plan A didn’t work. But here, nothing is going as well as we hoped. It’s almost come down to survival for the human species. For almost a year and a half, we’ll be training which is mentally hard when all that players want to do is compete. We had planned for seven weeks for Malaysia and Singapore, now it’s 17 weeks of straight training to the Olympics,” he added.
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