Ahead of CWG, boxer Manoj Kumar works on his technique

PATIALA: At the ongoing Federation Cup senior national athletics, a familiar face can be seen cheering on the athletes striving to make the cut for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. The stoutly-built athlete has nothing to do with athletics or the Federation Cup. In fact, he has no business to be there. Still, he has been watching the evening sessions of the competitions with rapt attention, seated with a group of trainees in the spectators stand.
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However, there is one common factor that has been drawing him to the blue synthetic turf at the NIS centre.He, like the athletes qualifying for CWG from the Fed Cup, too, will be part of India’s 227-member contingent to the CWG, albeit in a different sport – boxing.
Veteran pugilist Manoj Kumar, the 2010 Delhi CWG gold medallist, will represent India at Gold Coast Games in the men’s 69kg category. He will spearhead the Indian challenge along with another experienced boxer Vikas Krishan in the absence of Shiva Thapa and Gaurav Bidhuri.
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Manoj is part of the national camp here, training under the watchful eyes of chief national coach SR Singh and Argentina’s Santiago Nieva, the high-performance director of the men’s and women’s teams.
Manoj has been sweating a bucketful at the training sessions to get his body and punches in perfect shape. “The preparation is on right track. I have been working on fine-tuning my technique, especially the attack part. My foot movement is now faster which can help me cancel an opponent’s move as quickly as possible. “The boxing team will leave early for Gold Coast to acclimatise to the conditions. I will look to better my quarterfinal appearance at the Glasgow CWG. I am confident of securing a medal this time,” Manoj told TOI.
The Haryana boxer recently participated at the Strandja Memorial tournament in Sofia and lost in the pre-quarters to Morocco’s Abdelkabir Bellassek. However, Manoj isn’t reading much into his early exit. In fact, he is more interested in talking about Nieva’s unique approach of making every boxer sit and watch videos of his bouts several times to correct mistakes.
“It has never been done before where a coach records your training and shows you the bouts umpteen times until you rectify that particular flaw in your game. There has been a video analyst attached with the team, but this precision was missing where every small little detail was minutely observed. “Nieva would tell that he has learnt a lot watching videos and he is passing on that experience to us. He has created a Whatsapp group of boxers where sends videos daily of different boxing fights and then follows it up with us whether we have watched them or not,” he informed.
However, Manoj is not contemplating turning professional yet. “I want to make it big in amateur boxing by winning medals at the Asiad and Olympics,” he said.