Star shuttlers Sat-Chi eye ‘great things’ at Paris Oly

Chirag Shetty (left) and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy

Star Indian men's doubles pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty has "cracked" the service variation challenge and is focussing on "comprehensive physical and mental conditioning" to ensure peak performance at the upcoming Paris Olympics.

Satwik, 23, and Chirag, 26, have been troubled by the wide variations of tumble, spin and wide serves that their opponents, mainly the Koreans and Indonesians, have employed against them during the recent tournaments. Chirag said they have addressed the "new challenge" and remains confident of negotiating it during the Paris Games.

"Regarding serve variations, they are a new challenge, but placing complete importance on that wouldn't be right," Chirag told PTI in an email interview.

"There was a time when we struggled with receiving them, but we eventually cracked it. We know what to do, we've been practicing, and we're confident we'll come out strong at the Olympics to counter that. We're used to the expectations and pressures that come along in our game...we're primarily looking to go out there and do great things on the court and have fun while doing that."

The current World No. 3 pair had narrowly missed out of a quarter-final berth in the last Olympics when despite winning two of their three group matches,
the duo couldn't qualify for the knockout stage as it was settled on the basis of the number of games won and lost.

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever