The Hindu : Sport / Shooting : Foreign coaches await contract

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 25, 2005

Sport

Sport - Shooting

Foreign coaches await contract

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 24. The preparations are in full swing, albeit with borrowed ammunition and foreign coaches waiting to see their contract, in the national camp in progress at the Tughlakabad Range here, for the Commonwealth shooting championship to be held in Melbourne.

The National coach, Prof. Sunny Thomas, said ammunition was thoughtfully kept in reserve for this camp, and thus the shooters have been able to train.

"We had to borrow 0.32 ammunition and also about 15,000 cartridges for the shotgun training. We have ammunition for pistol and rifle to carry for the competition in Australia, but will be buying shotgun cartridges there,'' said Prof. Thomas here on Thursday.

"The electronic targets have been working and we have had good practice with coach Laszlo Szucsak,'' said rifle shooter Anjali Bhagwat before leaving for Mumbai.

Anjali will train back home before catching the flight to Bangkok on way to Melbourne, along with Deepali Deshpande. The rest of the shooters and the coaches will be leaving from here.

Anjali had opted to rest for a few months after the Olympics in Athens. She was quite pleased with her form during the trials when she shot 584 in 3-position, 398 out of 400 in air rifle and 590 in prone.

Anjali happy

Anjali and the rest of the rifle shooters were happy with the return of Szucsak, who had trained the Indian rifle shooters to world standards during his two-year stint before the Sydney Olympics. He had moved to Japan for the next four years.

Szucsak returned to the Indian camp in November 2004, but has been anxiously waiting for the contract from the Indian government, though the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) had called him along with the pistol coach Gyorik Csaba in January, with the consent of the Sports Authority of India.

"Csaba has been a good shooter himself,'' said Samaresh Jung, one of the key members of the pistol squad along with Jaspal Rana.

Prof. Thomas recalled with satisfaction the tremendous contribution made by Tibor Gonczol who was the pistol coach for the Indian squad for about 11 years from 1993.

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