Ready, aim, Tokyo

Shooters add three more Olympic quotas to India’s kitty, swell tally to best-ever of 15
Angad Bajwa (L) & Mairaj Khan (R) did a 1-2 in men’s skeet
Angad Bajwa (L) & Mairaj Khan (R) did a 1-2 in men’s skeet

CHENNAI: Touch. Feel. Hold. Pull.

That’s how Abhinav Bindra, India’s only individual Olympic gold-medallist, broke down shooting. Over the last 14 months, others have broken it down in simpler terms — See. Shoot. Win.

On Sunday, three more shooters bagged quota places to swell the number to 15 Tokyo berths, an Indian record. After Aishwary Tomar won bronze in the men’s 50m rifle 3-positions, Angad Bajwa and Mairaj Khan won silver and gold in men’s skeet at Asian Championships in Doha. The 1-2 is not only historic — it’s a first for India at this level — but it’s also representative of the sport’s rude health after the Rio Games no-show.

Anjum Moudgil kickstarted the race for quotas with a silver in women’s 10m air rifle at last year’s Worlds in Changwon. Since then, the country’s shooters have been setting records, collecting medals and topping the ranking charts.

Even though India have set new quota benchmarks in the last three Games (9 in 2008, 11 in 2012, 12 in 2016), this 15 should be seen as a new beginning.

For starters, they have 13 out of 16 quota places on offer in rifle and pistol. That’s as many as USA and South Korea and only fewer than China and Japan, who have the full complement of 16.
Anjali Bhagwat and Joydeep Karmakar, former Olympians, say the “presence of domestic coaches in the system” has played a huge role. “When I was there, our managers would fill in the role of chief coach,” Karmakar says. “With due respect to managers, they weren’t coaches.

“The scene today is different. People who were involved in Olympics and have won medals at Asian and Commonwealth Games are coaches. There is proper know-how and they all are keen to give back.”
Karmakar, who finished fourth in the 50m rifle prone event at London in 2012, has a point. The likes of Deepali Deshpande, Gagan Narang, Karmakar himself, Suma Shirur and Jaspal Rana among others have taken it upon themselves in developing the skills of the next-gen shooters. Focusing on the grassroots has yielded better than expected results — nine out of 15 quotas were earned by shooters 25 or below (a further one or two may yet come India’s way through world rankings at the end of the qualification period next May).  

The attitude and exposure have also changed. Bhagwat narrates an example to further illustrate this point. “When we used to go to qualifying events to foreign countries, we had this perception of shooters from other countries as sort of superheroes. These youngsters do not carry that sort of baggage with them. They walk into the shooting arena as superheroes themselves. This sort of change in mindset contributed a lot towards winning quotas in places like Brazil (Sanjeev Rajput and Yashaswini Deswal).”     

Exposure and the right facilities have also played a big role. While Karmakar says there has been a ‘sea change (in the system) between then and now’, Bhagwat says the difference is as clear as night and day. “I went to the 2000 Olympics without any ammunition. Nowadays, everybody goes to events 10-15 days in advance to properly plan, prepare and visualise their competition. They are better prepared.”

It turns out the shooters even outdid the expectation of the National Rifle Association of India head Raninder Singh. After the two medals in skeet, he tweeted: “(...) way to go team India you exceeded my estimate by an additional quota.”While what follows next will ultimately decide the conversion rate, with eight months to go, Indian shooting is in a good space at the moment.

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