Sharath hopes to shape India's first TT Olympic medallist by 2036 with some help from German football

New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) Recently-retired Indian table tennis great A Sharath Kamal has given himself 11 years to produce the country's first Olympic medallist in the racket sport and German football club Borussia Dortmund could end up being his unlikely ally in pursuit of this path-breaking dream.

In his decorated two decade old career, the 43-year-old won plenty of medals at the Commonwealth Games and helped India end their barren run at the Asian Games but despite five Olympic appearances, he and the rest of his teammates could not get near the coveted podium.

Having retired from the sport in March, Sharath remains a man with strong purpose and clear vision. He is setting up a High Performance Centre (HPC) close to his hometown Chennai, a world class facility backed by the Tamil Nadu government, with a singular aim to produce an Olympic medallist.

"I'm looking at my main goal at this very moment is setting up the High Performance Centre, making it run and hopefully what I couldn't achieve in my career of you know the Olympic medal, I hope I can live the dream through the young talents that are there here and I can support them in their career.

"Yeah. So we're looking at 2036 Olympic Games. Hopefully it happens in India. That would be the best. Even if it doesn't happen, still giving myself 11 years time," said Sharath in an interview to PTI on the sidelines of the National Ranking Table Tennis event here on Tuesday.

Sharath, who is busy with administrative roles at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), will be the sporting director of the HPC while full-time coaches are being sought from Germany, and sport's powerhouses China and Japan.

Sharath also revealed that he is in talks with top German football club Borussia Dortmund to help his HPC in talent identification. The facility will be up and running by October.

"I need a lot of help from abroad also. So I have been talking to the German Table Tennis Federation where I have played for a long time and also to a couple of football clubs (including Borussia Dortmund) in Europe where we can have some exchanges on in terms of talent identification. Because talent identification is something I feel we don't do very robustly.

"I haven't explored so much into the Indian cricket side, but European football I do know that they have a fantastic structure in terms of talent identification and getting them," said Sharath.

Identifying talent between age 11-15 key ========================== The HPC will be looking to work with the talent in the 11-15 age bracket so that they have enough time to ready for the 2036 Olympics.

"So it's almost like two and a half Olympic cycles where we can identify talent between the age of 11 to 15 and grow with them and groom them at the same time. These days there's a lot of sports science advancement that's been available and which I feel like we can make use of it." Sharath and his team is looking to groom the players in three phases.

"So, if you're identifying talent between the age group of 11 to 15, in 10-11 years' time, they will be at their peak performance is what we can see. That is exactly where I also hit my peak around 22-23.

"The first phase when they're in the age group between 11 to 15 for the first two years, I want to look at 50 to 60 kids, have a bunch of, a larger pool of kids where we are able to get them from across the country, put them into a good training structure.

"And the second stage will be after two to three years when there'll be some weeding out and we'll be able to close the group there between 25 to 40. And six to eight years from now, the focus pool will be around 15 to 20 players," said the Khel Ratna awardee.

The Borussia Dortmund help =================== Sharath knows that he can't produce an Olympic medallist all by himself and will need technical support from experts in Germany, where he played a lot of table tennis at the club level.

He would also love the experts from China and Japan to train the athletes in HPC but that is easier said than done considering the coaches from two Asian giants are not very forthcoming and language barrier is a major issue.

"So we will also have some foreign experts coming in to help us grow. So I might not be fully dependent on them, but they will also be part of the ecosystem that we are trying to build in.

"Of course I've played the sport at the highest level. I know the way how to get in there, but I still need a lot of educational help. So a clear pathway, a foolproof pathway into making these kids champions.

What about coaches from China and Japan? "I am looking at that also because they are the powerhouse of the world table tennis, but they are not very open. So it becomes very tough for us to get access to them, but still again me sitting on the chair of the ITTF Athletes Commission, along with an Olympic champion from China, Liu Shiwen, that is opening up doors for me into China," he added.

In the end, Sharath said he was also open to coaching the Indian team on event basis but he is yet to decide if he wants to enter TTFI and govern the game in India. He surely has his plate full. PTI BS PM BS PM PM