Sathiyan Gnanasekaran has seen a meteoric rise in the field of table tennis in the last three years or so and his development is parallel to the betterment of table tennis in the country. He has qualified for the Olympics in Tokyo and will be playing in the men’s singles draw. Over the last couple of years, Sathiyan has upset a few big names and that is what he is aiming for this Olympics.
Sathiyan is part of a four-member Indian table contingent, which also includes Sharath Kamal, Manika Batra and Sutirtha Mukherjee. Apart from Sharath Kamal, who is a veretan, big things are expected of him.
“Super excited for my debut Olympics. It’s been amazing, the feeling has been great here to arrive and lots of athletes, the atmosphere is vibrant. Just enjoying here and looking forward to having a great performance. I am going to enjoy my game as usual, go out there and enjoy playing at the biggest stage in the Olympics. There are some nerves but I am super excited to go out and give my best.
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“It’s going to be very hard since it’s my debut Olympics. But I am looking for 2-3 upsets and really get into the quarter-finals, it will be an amazing achievement. I will take it round by round here, I just want to play and pull off a couple of big wins here, that’s my primary goal. If I can go to the quarters, it’s just that day. You never know you have a great draw, you play really well and certainly, you can even get into the medal rounds. I am just hoping to play really well,” he told News18.com in an exclusive interaction.
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Sathiyan described his journey from the Delhi airport to Tokyo as “amazing” and said the “very grand and rousing send off” organised by the table tennis federation, Sports Authority of India and the Sports Ministry showed that sports is “being given so much importance”.
“The facilities in Tokyo were really good but it did take some time because I think we were a really large group and they did some testing, it took around 3-4 hours for us to get out of the airport because of the results and procedures. It took another hour in the village to settle down and everything but the process was fine. I think because of the Covid test and all those protocols and social distancing. So certainly they had to do things in batches but everything was fine, the transport and all the arrangements here and the (Games) village is amazing, the food arrangements, the laundry service, the transport, everything has been arranged very well and I really love the food, there is a wide variety of it,” Sathiyan described.
Sathiyan laid out the rules in the Games village and shared that they are not allowed to interact much with the athletes of other nations. He further said that despite his experience with the Japanese league, playing at the Olympics is a different feeling and he wants to perform his best.
‘There are rules, we have been practicing among ourselves. We have been given good food as well so no issues there. We are not allowed to mingle too much with the other countries, as of now it’s all going good. Very different from my league experience, we were a small contingent and we were going around cities to play. Here, it’s a massive village and the atmosphere is too vibrant, the playing condition, the training and match arena was spectacular. Certainly, there’s a big difference playing the Olympics and the league. The Olympics are a big stage but the league was good exposure and good preparation for the Olympics but certainly, playing at the biggest stage is a surreal feeling, it’s a dream-come-true situation and I hope I can do justice and play out my best in the Games.
“We know the playing conditions here. We had our first training session on Monday and the organisers did a great job in organising the halls and everything was nice. We aren’t allowed to meet athletes of other countries so we are adhering to the rules. It’s not scary, there are protocols, we have been given tubes for saliva test, there are RT-PCR tests everyday. We have been asked by the officials to give our saliwa for the tests everyday. They have put glass cabins in the dining hall so that there is social distancing. I hope they can pull it off in a successful way.”
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