World Cup gold medallist Apurvi Chandela Saturday called the fierce competition in the Indian women's air rifle team a good thing as it motivates her to go the extra mile be in terms of "meditation" or "visualisation practices".
India's Chandela shattered the world record on her way to the women's 10m air rifle gold with an incredible sequence of scores in the ISSF World Cup here.
"All of them coming up is actually good for the sport. I needed to push myself further and I have been performing consistently since the last year," Apurvi said about the intense competition from Anjum Moudgil, Elavenil Valarivan and Mehuli Ghosh in this event.
"I looked at it in a way that I get motivated, push myself harder, I can't settle down at any score, there is no satisfaction that I think can take from it. That's actually a good thing for me. It keeps me motivated."
"It's a long process which I have been working on. It was just pressure handling. To get better, I had to push myself. Earlier, I used to take less time and shoot early, but now I take a little longer to settle down a bit."
About the last few shots in Saturday's final, she said, "I was just trying to control my nerves, nerves do play a big role. I just asked myself to stay calm as it was a matter of few more shots."
"The last one month I am working really hard on finals and qualifications also. And even in January I have gone abroad for open competitions. I won a gold there as well, so I took confidence and that competition helped me today in handling pressure."
"The pressure was there definitely, I am happy I could control it and execute."
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content