India shuttler Manoj Sarkar who won a bronze medal in the men's singles SL3 event at the recently concluded Tokyo Paralympics stated how he was under immense pressure during the semi-final.
Manoj won a bronze medal after defeating Japan's Daisuke Fujihara at the Yoyogi National Stadium Court 3. He defeated Fujihara 22-20, 21-13 to finish on the podium. The entire match lasted for 47 minutes.
"It was not an easy journey to the Tokyo Paralympics but after seeing this medal, I feel like all the problems have gone away," Manoj Sarkar toldon Tuesday.
Manoj had lost the men's singles SL3 semi-final match in straight sets. Daniel Bethell of Great Britain defeated the Indian 21-8, 21-10 to seal the match in 38 minutes.
"There was huge game pressure. In the semi-final, I took the pressure of the Paralympics and forgot that these are the same players which I play against regularly. And secondly, I tried to think about the future [match] not the present," he added while talking about the semi-final match.
The Indian para-shuttler also acknowledged the coaches, as he said: "I would like to thank those who are running Badminton from the background like Gopi sir [Pullela Gopichand], Prakash Padukone, Gaurav Khanna sir. Because of their roles, we have become players. Saina Nehwal popularised badminton and when PV Sindhu won two medals at the Olympics, we got more motivated. And when we went to play this time, we felt like if they can do it so do we."
"When I was playing for the bronze medal, I had immense pressure in my mind. As host team was Japan and I had a match against a Japanese player. So all media was there and it was live on Japan TV. But in my mind, it was like if PV Sindhu can do it they why can't Manoj Sarkar," he said.
Further, talking about his future goals, he reflected: "For the future in the next games, I will treat them as Paralympics matches. And when I will play in Paris 2024, I will change the colour of this [pointing towards its bronze medal]."
The 31-year-old was also excited about meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he said: "I would like to say thank you to him and will seek his blessings. Because of him we got so much motivated and received such positive energy. Both in the Olympics and Paralympics India had a good medal tally this time and the full credit of this goes to the Prime Minister."
India had sent its biggest ever contingent of 54 para-athletes across as many as 9 sporting disciplines at the Games. Since making its first appearance at the Paralympics in 1968, India had won 12 medals in total till the 2016 Rio edition. The country has now massively improved upon that entire number by 7 medals at the Tokyo Paralympics 2020 alone.
( With inputs from ANI )
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