Ace paddler Sharath Kamal, who clinched a historic mixed doubles bronze with Manika Batra at the Asian Games last year, feels the road to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics seems difficult in the newly-introduced category, but once the spot is booked, a medal win was possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think mixed doubles is our biggest chance to have that medal . Firstly, me and Manika did well at the Games. I think more than the Olympic Games, the qualification to the Games is harder,\u201d Sharath told a select group of reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI say so as there are only 16 teams at the Olympic Games so that you start from the round of 16. If you win three matches, you have a medal. So, it\u2019s only three matches there, but to get there – that\u2019s the more difficult path,\u201d Sharath pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are preparing for that. We are exclusively training for mixed doubles and trying to spend more time, because mixed doubles qualification will be through pro-2-tournaments this year. So it\u2019s a ranking of a complete year and we need to perform consistently over the year,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chennai-based paddler had also guided the men\u2019s team to a historic bronze at the Asian Games with a shock win over Japan, ending a 60-year wait for a medal in table tennis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sharath and rising star Manika then clinched a surprise bronze in mixed doubles to cap off a dream run at Asian Games, raising hopes of even an Olympic medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ace paddler Sharath Kamal, who clinched a historic mixed doubles bronze with Manika Batra at the Asian Games last year, feels the road to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics seems difficult in the newly-introduced category, but once the spot is booked, a medal win was possible. \u201cI think mixed doubles is our biggest chance to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55020,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55018\/revisions\/55020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}