India can realistically think of winning an Olympic medal at the 2024 Paris Games if the pace of development is sustained properly, feels former National table tennis champion Soumyadeep Roy.
The Arjuna Awardee, who won three CWG medals as a player, was one of the coaches at Gold Coast where the Indian teams created history by winning gold.
“There has been a marked improvement in the men’s and women’s world rankings. The men’s team is in the 12th spot while the women’s team is in the 14th place in the current rankings. There are at least six players from India who are in the top 100 of the individual world rankings. If we continue to better our performance, we can easily expect a medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics,” said Soumyadeep during a “meet-the-press’ programme organised by the Calcutta Sports Journalists Club on Monday.
The current women’s National champion Sutirtha Mukherjee, who was a part of the triumphant CWG team, said training under National coach Massimo Costantini has been helping the players develop the skill and the temperament to excel.
“We have been training together for the last few months under Costantini and that has bettered the skills and the understanding among the players,” said Sutirtha.
Soumyadeep also hailed the influence of Ultimate Table Tennis. “It has definitely come to help the Indian players. This is a high level professional tournament where the Indians get a lot of time to interact with top-level players from different parts of the world. I feel the good performance in the Commonwealth Games is a direct result of this outcome,” said Soumyadeep.
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