THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 70 top shooters in the country have assembled in the city for the National Coaching camp in rifle and pistol shooting organised by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). The event commenced at the Shooting Range, Vattiyoorkavu here on Tuesday.
State police chief T P Senkumar inaugurated the camp during a function organised at the Shooting Range that was also attended by Manoj Abraham, Thiruvananthapuram Range IG, who is in addition Central Sports officer for Kerala Police. Sports and Youth Affairs director P Pugazhendi, G Kishore, Principal of SAI-LNCPE and director of SAI Kerala region, Kerala State Sports Council president Padmini Thomas and veteran shooting coach Sunny Thomas were also present.
This is for the first time that SAI is organising a national shooting camp in Kerala which will last till July 6. This is also expected to help the shooters as they prepare for the International Shooting Sport Federation World Cup in Azerbaijan next month and the forthcoming 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Abhinav Bindra, the first Indian to win an individual gold medal in Olympics, Olympic bronze medalist Gagan Narang, Asian and Commonwealth gold medal winners Jitu Rai, Apurvi Chandela and Gurpreet Singh, all of whom have already won quota places for the 2016 Olympics, are among the 40 men and 30 women shooters who are expected to attend the camp.
Speaking at the inauguration, Dhronacharya Award recipient Sunny Thomas said that the camp will help the shooter to be in good shape as they enter a crucial part of the season. Officers Senkumar and Manoj Abraham, on the occasion, also traded their service revolvers for sport pistols as the police duo tested their accuracy on the digital targets installed at the range.
The shooters will train under the supervision of eight Indian coaches Kanwar Randhir Singh, P K Dhamani, D S Chandel, Manoj Kumar, Mohinder Lal, Syed Wajid Ali, Abha Dhillan and Gangadhar Sharma along with two foreign coaches Kazakhstan’s Stanislav Lapidus and Russian Pavel Smirnov.
