We train more than British boxers but still don’t win gold: Vikas Krishan
NEW DELHI: Ace Indian boxer Vikas Krishan Yadav, who returned to the country late Sunday night after winning a silver medal (75kg) in the recently-concluded Asian Boxing Championship in Bangkok, has set his eyes on a 2016 Rio Olympics berth through next month’s World Championships.
Vikas lost to 19-year-old reining Youth Olympic champion Bektemir Melikuziev of Uzbekistan in a brutal summit clash on Saturday, a loss he said owed largely to overconfidence. “I was overconfident about the result, I thought he is nothing,” he told reporters on Monday. “But I forgot that at 19 I was the Asian Games gold-medalist too, so I should have known that he could also be dangerous. Actually I don’t even know how I managed to lose. No doubt it was the toughest bout of my career but I should have won it. When I got to know that Melikuziev is just 19, I thought I would kill him and that made me overconfident.”
Vikas then stressed on an important aspect of opponent’s training, which he had noticed during his time out of the country. “We fetch bronze after training six hours a day, [but] when we trained with UK boxers in their country, I came to know that they use to train for only two hours a day and end up with gold at the major championships”, Vikas said.
British boxers produced remarkable performances at the 2012 London Olympics, winning three golds, one silver and one bronze out of the ten boxers that participated. “We are not supposed to go home before a week or fortnight of any major event. However, British boxers can go their home prior two or three days of the event if the rest period is mentioned in their schedule,” revealed Vikas.
He then described their training schedule, saying that British pugilists go to the ring for half an hour apiece in the morning, afternoon and one hour in the evening and still put up good show in mega events.
The Haryana-born Vikas, who won bronze at the 2011 World Championships – only the second Indian to fetch a medal at the event – was confident of qualifying for Rio from the 2015 World Championship, to be held from October 6 in Doha. “In my weight category, the main competition in the Worlds is going to come from Cuba, Russia and Kazakhstan. Besides I have to work on increasing my weight as well,” said the 23-year-old.