Exclusive: India men's hockey team Craig Fulton dissects Asian Games campaign on First Sports

In an exclusive conversation with Rupha Ramani on the latest episode of First Sports, India men’s hockey coach Craig Fulton spoke on the team’s ongoing campaign at the 19th Asian Games, their road to Paris 2024 among other topics. Fulton said that while the Indian team is carrying the weight of expectations on their shoulders heading into the Hangzhou Games, the task of sealing their qualification for next year’s Olympics in the French capital was by no means adding any extra pressure on them. “Of course we want to qualify. Of course we want to go to Paris. So you have to qualify somewhere. There’s two routes to qualify — one is through Hangzhou, this Asian Games, the other one is the continental qualifier in January. All goes well, we want to qualify through here and stand on the podium and get that gold medal. “Does it bring extra pressure? No because all roads lead to here. We have to qualify somewhere. At the same time we’re training for it, we’re aware of it. We’re in a good place,” Fulton, who had only recently replaced Australian Graham Reid as the men’s head coach, said on the Mic Up segment on the episode that aired on Tuesday. Watch the full episode here:

Read | India eyeing Paris 2024 qualification through Asiad, says Sreejesh The Harmanpreet Singh-led side are off to a solid start in the 19th edition of the Games, thrashing Uzbekistan and Singapore by margins of 16-0 and 16-1 respectively, and are a tearaway favourite to finish on top of the podium later in the continental event. The side had also recently ended a four-decade wait for an Olympic medal, winning bronze in the Tokyo Games in 2021. Commenting on Indian hockey’s meteoric rise in recent years, from failing to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to standing on the podium a little over a decade later, the South African felt that the team has had good people in place in recent years and the players are a lot more ambitious now. “In this last decade, perhaps from 2015-2016 where the team finished I think it was eighth in Rio, and then if you look at the following cycle five years it was third, and then now we’re ranked third and have kept that, this last block has been very, very positive for Indian hockey. **Amit Rohidas Exclusive: 'Indian men's hockey team won’t take any opponent lightly'** “I think the upswing about it is that they’ve got good people in place, and had good people in place with the previous coaching staff. What they put down from a fitness point of view from Rio to Tokyo to now, it’s been a continuous climbing of the stairs. It’s not going down the stairs. It’s on an upwards cycle for sure. “The future’s bright because the group is kicking in, they’ve got a bit more youth in it. But at the same time, it has all the experience that it had before. So it’s a nice blend at the moment, and the guys are very, very confident where they’re at and they’re very ambitious as well. And that’s very important,” added Fulton.