With Nepali players crashing out in the early rounds in other sports—there were 204 athletes representing Nepal in 25 different disciplines—the prospect of the nation’s returning home empty-handed from the biggest sports meet in the continent had looked frighteningly close to coming true.

It had been the same story in the previous edition of the games, four years ago in Guangzhou. Then it was boxer Deepak Maharjan, who had bailed Nepal out by winning a bronze medal.

Over the years, Nepali martial artists have accorded themselves pretty well at the Asian Games. Nepal has won a total of 23 medals in these disciplines: one silver and the rest bronze.

Taekwondo has made up most of the medal tally, with a silver and 13 bronze medals, while pugilists have earned six bronze medals and karatekas, three bronze medals so far.

But even in these disciplines, Nepalis aren’t doing as well as they used to in yesteryears. Olympian Sangina Baidya says the reason for this regression is that while other Asian countries like India have taken giant leaps forward, Nepal has not been able to keep apace.

“Taekwondo, karate, wushu, and so on had just begun to spread during our glory years. We picked them up and mastered them early enough to become a power house in South Asia,” recalls Baidya.

“Unlike other sports, martial arts did not require that expensive infrastructure be first installed. A good instructor and a dojo [place to train] were sufficient.”

Another Olympian,   Deepak Bista attributes Nepal’s early success to the coaches we had then. He says some of the best taekwondo coaches in South Korea frequently came over to train our athletes.

He credits world champion Hen Chel Oh and grand master JK Shin for producing Nepal’s golden generation of taekwondo players, which featured Bidhan Lama and Sabita Rajbhandari, among others.

Lama won a bronze medal in the 1988 Olympics; back then taekwondo had just been introduced as a demonstration sport and the medal was not officially recognised, but he did win Nepal honours on such a big stage.

Rajbhandari is the only Nepali athlete to have ever won a silver medal for Nepal at the Asian Games. She achieved the feat at the 13th Asian Games, which was held in Thailand in 1998. Baidya and Bista also participated in the 2004 games in Athens and the 2008 games in Beijing; although they didn’t medal, they were the only Nepali players to qualify for the Olympics.

But that heyday is already looking like a thing of the distant past. What’s more, we are even losing ground in South Asia now, with countries like India and Afghanistan replacing Nepal at the helm.

Nepal, who had won a historic 32 gold medals in the eighth South Asian Games (SAG), in 1999, ended up with a mere eight in the last edition held in Bangladesh, in 2010.

“The way the game is played has changed. New technology has been introduced and we have not been able to update ourselves accordingly,” says Bista, who won back-to-back bronze medals in the 14th and 15th Asian Games.

Manita Shahi, a South Asian gold medalist and a bronze winner in the 15th Asian Games, says that the introduction of electronic chest pads, among other such contraptions to enhance training, is starting to make the competition stiffer than it used to be for our taekwondo players.

“For us to train like that, an entire new system needs to be installed here and even if that is installed, we need to overcome the load-shedding problem,” says Shahi.

Deepak Shrestha, a SAG gold medal winner in karate and currently a coach, echoes Bista. “Our training system needs to be changed. We have been following the same old method, while other countries have introduced scientific coaching method,” says Shrestha.

But both Bista and Shrestha say that it is still easier to invest in martial arts than in other sports, as adjusting just a few things will fix the problem.

First of all, they say, the coaches must be provided the proper training and that coaches too need to be updated with new trends first in order to teach the pupils.

“Things like player nutrition and the psychological aspects of training should also be incorporated in the daily regimen,” say the duo, who are both national coaches today.

This is the sentiment that is repeated after each big international tournament.

But the time has come for action to be taken soon.

And unlike with other sports, martial artists say that it is easier to bring reform to their discipline as it does not require such huge investments as building a new state-of-the-art stadium.

Investing in coaches and getting our athletes up to speed with the ways their sport has changed is all that’s needed, say Bista and Shrestha. Failing that, the lone medal we won in the recent Asian Games might be the last.